Republican lawmaker Michael McCaul and Democratic lawmaker Joaquin Castro led a bipartisan initiative earlier this week to enhance US vaccine diplomacy as many nations depend on Russian and Chinese anti-Covid vaccines to fight the pandemic.
McCaul and Castro in their letter asked the US president Joe Biden to use Corbevax as a part of US vaccine diplomacy and use it to end vaccine inequity. “We urge your administration to consider efforts to partner with and leverage efforts such as this, capitalising on the generosity and ingenuity of a US institution as an extension of US vaccine diplomacy and global efforts to end the Covid-19 pandemic,” McCaul and Castro urged.
They highlighted that the vaccine developed by Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine is ‘a proven, low-cost, scalable’ vaccine which can help low-income nations scale up their vaccination numbers. They also highlighted that earlier in December the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) approval to Corbevax.
They lauded the Indian drug watchdog for displaying their confidence in the vaccine and highlighted that Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical company, Biological E Limited developed capacity to produce 1.2 billion doses. He also lauded the Indian government for purchasing $300 million doses of CORBEVAX and expressing confidence in the results of the clinical trials.
“While we recognize existing administration efforts to supply COVID-19 vaccines around the world, the global supply is woefully insufficient to meet urgent and pressing demands. Our partners and allies are forced to utilize ineffective and substandard vaccines from China and Russia, adversaries seeking to leverage this pandemic for economic and political gain,” they further wrote in the letter, according to the website of the Texas lawmaker.
The vaccines Sputnik V and Sinovac of China have been supplied to many low-income nations in Africa as well as Asia. Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine developed by the state-run Gamaleya research centre, was lauded by Putin as the world’s first Covid vaccine in August 2020 and since then has been supplied to 71 countries, including India. While some are sceptic of Sinovac, a report by news agency AFP from February 2021 highlighted that Sputnik V was a diplomatic and political win for Russian president Vladimir Putin.
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