India defeats China in vaccine diploma

India takes vaccine diplomacy seriously. In parliament on Wednesday, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said the country’s “Friendship of Vaccine” program “raised India’s position and generated good international goodwill.”

Donating or exporting medical supplies allows Beijing and New Delhi to polish their light power, showcase their technological prowess, offer their companies positions in new markets, and brag to the domestic public that they are major players on the world stage. . With Western nations preoccupied with inoculating their own populations, Asian giants are striving to make the most of the opportunity.

The leaders of Sri Lanka and Dominica personally received shipments of vaccines made in India at the airport, and the Mongolian prime minister made a blow made in India. Chinese vaccines have inoculated Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Indonesian Joko Widodo and the President of Seychelles. In Europe, Chinese vaccines have established a foothold in Serbia, Hungary, northern Macedonia and Montenegro.

India’s massive pharmaceutical industry accounts for about 20% of the world’s generic medicines and over 60% of all global vaccine production. A Foreign Ministry website lists 72 countries that have received about 60 million doses of Covid vaccines made in India. A private company, Serum Institute of India, together with the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca and based in Maryland, Novavax, have promised 1.1 billion doses to Covax, the effort led by the World Health Organization to provide vaccines to the poorest countries of the world.

According to official statistics, widely disputed by experts, Beijing has done a much better job than New Delhi in containing the pandemic at home: only about 5,000 Chinese citizens have died, compared to about 160,000 Indians. Independently verified figures are hard to find, but Chinese leadership in vaccine diplomacy is much smaller – if at all. According to a recent essay on foreign affairs by Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert at the Foreign Relations Council, Chinese companies have so far received orders for about 572 million doses and promised another 10 million Covax. The Chinese Foreign Ministry says it intends to offer free vaccines to 69 countries and sell them to 28 other countries.

Last week, New Delhi’s Quad partners – a weak group from the US, Japan, Australia and India – stepped in to disrupt India’s efforts. At a virtual summit, the first to involve leaders from all four countries, Quad pledged to deliver at least one billion doses of vaccines, including one developed by Johnson & Johnson,

to Indo-Pacific nations by the end of next year. The US, Japan and Australia will finance the production and delivery of vaccines by a private Indian company, Biological E. Australia will use its regional logistics expertise to deliver them.

Sharing their strengths makes sense for Quad countries, and the vaccine initiative should reassure critics who see the group as little more than a discussion shop. The focus on Southeast Asia directly pushes against Beijing’s efforts to dominate the region. But both the new initiative and the success of vaccine diplomacy in New Delhi offer a broader lesson for India. It is much more likely to achieve its goals by working closely with Western democracies than by initiating a quixotic search for “self-confidence.”

Against the backdrop of growing nationalism, the Modi government has described its vaccination effort as part of a successful quest to create an “autonomous India”. He rushed through the emergency approval of an internal vaccine developed by an Indian drug, Bharat Biotech, despite not having completed phase 3 studies yet. On March 1, a nurse administered the still unproven Indian vaccine to Mr. Modi.

In reality, the skill of the vaccine in India comes from collaboration, not from self-confidence. Take Serum Institute, the company that provides India with much of its Covid vaccine muscle by pumping 2.5 million doses a day of AstraZeneca vaccine and collaborating with other Western companies, including Novovax. The Made in India vaccine was developed by AstraZeneca in collaboration with Oxford University and, with financial assistance from the US Serum Institute, began producing the AstraZeneca vaccine before it was clear that it would be approved by the WHO, the United Kingdom or India. . (U.S. regulators have not yet approved it.) But that risk was partially underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which promised to offset potential losses.

To date, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved by the WHO and welcomed in many countries. China’s vaccines, criticized by critics for low data transparency and, in some cases, low efficacy rates, do not have this international stamp. If Covid vaccines made in India are welcome all over the world, it is partly because they are supported by the transparency and rigor of Western medicine. Often, funding by Western NGOs increases their attractiveness.

There is nothing wrong with India’s ambition to develop homemade vaccines. But, as the country’s own experience shows, India does best when it is open and collaborative – and receives little help from its Western friends.