India facing US pressure to restart vaccine exports as devastating Covid wave recedes

India is facing growing calls to ease its ban on exporting Covid-19 vaccines after strong measures to stem the country’s devastating domestic outbreak brought infections down.

One of the world’s largest vaccine producers, India imposed the ban during the spring as it pushed to increase its vaccination rate during an outbreak that saw the country set new global records for coronavirus infections on consecutive days.

But “months after curbs were imposed” to tackle the crisis, officials in the US and with Covax, the UN-backed vaccine distribution initiative, hope that a “more stable health situation will persuade the country to resume exports”, The Washington Post said, especially to “lower-income countries that are bearing the brunt of the latest wave”.

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Jab diplomacy

Many of the world’s developing countries “had counted on India to supply around a billion shots this year”, reported The Washington Post. But “Indian officials have not committed to a firm date” for ending the ban and “mixed messaging has clouded production forecasts”.

In April, the chief executive of the Serum Institute of India – the world’s largest vaccine producer – told the Associated Press that he expected the ban to be lifted by June if India’s outbreak was under control. But “infections increased the next month”, reaching their peak “in May, with at least 2.7 million cases reported in one week”, The Washington Post added.

At the time, as the “second wave of the pandemic battered the country”, India had only “opened up vaccinations for those above the age of 45, and shots for adults over the age of 18 began in May”, reported Quartz. The ban “came in the light of a severe vaccine shortage” across the country, the site added, “which the government has often denied”.

The US is now “communicating regularly with India in bilateral and multilateral channels to discuss the supply of Covid-19 vaccines”, a senior Biden administration official told Reuters. It is expected to be “a key topic” when Joe Biden hosts a summit of leaders of the “Quad” countries – Australia, India, Japan and the US – on 24 September.

However the timeline for lifting the ban is still unclear, with the head of a group advising the Indian government on vaccinations telling Bloomberg that the country was likely to allow the resumption of exports only next year.

In a report published last week, Covax officials cited India’s export ban as one of the key factors behind the programme having access to only around 1.4 billion doses by the end of 2021, far short of the 2 billion doses it forecast. And the ban continues to be “particularly devastating for lower-income countries”, The Washington Post added.

The Biden administration is “quietly pressuring” India to release its vaccine supplies, sources with knowledge of the ongoing talks told Axios, adding that the White House is hoping to tempt Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a “higher-profile role” at an upcoming global Covid-19 summit in order to end the ban and resume exports.

Another official said the negotiations were “not tied to a specific summit or engagement” and the site noted that the talks also come at a time when the US has “effectively banned its own vaccine exports for months until it had enough supply for all Americans”.

“While the US is pushing India to kickstart its vaccine exports, it has stalled its own vaccine exports for months to prioritise shots for its population under the ‘America First’ policy”, said the Times of India.

And this hint of hypocrisy highlighted by the Mumbai-based paper has also been further complicated by the US reserving “hundreds of millions of doses for boosters, complicating its position as a proponent of dose-sharing”, Axios added.

Booster politics

The debate over booster jabs for Western countries has often centred on criticism that it will further exacerbate the shortages felt elsewhere.

Writing in The Guardian, Dr Charlotte Summer, a lecturer in intensive care medicine at the University of Cambridge, compared the plan to handing out “extra lifejackets to people who already have lifejackets, while… leaving other people to drown without a single lifejacket”.

Global awareness of “America’s booster program and the White House’s decision to restrict exports of key raw materials that go into vaccine production”, US officials “have been cautious about pushing too hard”, The Washington Post said.

Prior to the export ban, India had also sold or donated about 66 million doses of the vaccine to almost 100 lower-income countries, according to government data. The US has “delivered 110 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to 65 countries”, NPR added, but India’s effort outstrips other G7 nations’ willingness to share much-needed jabs.

Reuters noted “that Washington had diverted its own supply of raw materials for vaccine production to India in April, given its urgent needs”. And an official told the agency that the Biden administration “commend[s] India for being one of the largest manufacturers for safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines globally”.

Pointedly, however, the official added “that Covax and the world rely heavily on India’s contributions”, adding: “It’s important for the United States to engage all our allies and partners on these matters so we can take the necessary actions to end this pandemic together.”

Modi faced intense “internal criticism for allowing millions of doses to be exported before the emergence of a second wave it failed to anticipate”, Axios said, but with the pandemic now subsiding in India, it is becoming “more palatable to resume exports”.

Much will now rest on the upcoming Quad summit and the global Covid-19 summit that will follow, the site suggested, where the US wants “countries participating... to pledge that Covax should be the main vehicle to distribute vaccines”.