India COVID19 India should be provided resources to make vaccines, says top US disease expert
India, the largest vaccine maker in the world, should be provided with resources to make its own vaccines or donate vaccines, Antony Fauci, the top US expert on COVID-19, has said. He also said that all of India should “shut down,” as some its states have done, to break the chain of transmission. Fauci suggested that a priority for India should be to set up field hospitals like China had done.
“India is the largest vaccine-producing country in the world. They've got to get their resources -- not only from within but also from without and that's the reason why other countries need to chip in to be able to get either supplies for the Indians to make their own vaccines or to get vaccines donated,” Fauci told a TV interviewer on Sunday.
“One of the ways to do that is to have the big companies that have the capability of making vaccines to really scale up in a great way to get literally hundreds of millions of doses to be able to get to them,” he said.
He said that the "endgame" in fighting the pandemic is vaccinating everyone.
Vaccines are one of the ways of “breaking the transmission,” but others “like shutting down the government” should be undertaken, Fauci said.
“I have advised them in the past that you really need to do that. You’ve got to shut down. I believe several of the Indian states have already done that but you need to break the chain of transmission,” he said.
Fauci made the observations in an interview on ABC TV with George Stephanopoulos, who was former President Bill Clinton's spokesperson.
“They have really got to get hospital beds and do really what the Chinese did way back a year or so ago, where you essentially build up with -- the equivalent of field hospitals. You've got to get that. You can't have people out in the street not having a hospital bed,” he said.
In fact, during the COVID crisis last year, tents were also set up in New York's Central Park to treat those who could not find hospital beds and convention centers and sports venues were also made into emergency medical facilities.
Fauci called the oxygen shortages in India “really tragic.”
President Joe Biden has ordered the supply of vaccine manufacturing equipment and ingredients to India along with oxygen and devices for making the gas and medications to treat COVID-19. The total COVID-19 aid package for India is expected to run to $100 million, according to his Spokesperson Jen Psaki.
Biden's administration has also agreed to a request made by India and South Africa to the World Trade Organisation to waive the intellectual property rights. However, it faces opposition from other countries, including Germany and Switzerland, blocking WTO approval.
Fauci dismissed suggestions that dropping the patent rights to allow others to make the vaccines would hamper the manufacture by companies now making them.
“I don’t think that’s the case,” he said of India. "They can scale up. You know, they’ve done an extraordinary amount. You’ve got to give them credit. They’ve really just really done something that is really quite impressive in the way they’ve gotten their vaccine supply up and out for the rest of the world.”
Waiving patents won't interfere with that now, he said.
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