Global supply of Covax hit due to coronavirus crisis in India, USAID tells lawmakers

Because of the sudden hit of the coronavirus crisis in India, the global supply of UN Covax's initiative has been badly hit, a top Biden administration official told lawmakers.

Due to the unprecedented Covid-19 crisis in India, the global supply of COVAX has been badly hit, so much so that there are many parts of the world where one shot has been dispensed to health workers or frontline workers and the second shot has not been forthcoming, a top Biden administration official told lawmakers on Thursday. "COVAX has suffered a big blow given the scale of the pandemic in India," Samantha Power, Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), told members of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations for a hearing on the Fiscal 2022 Budget Request for USAID. "The Serum Institute of India, which had planned to supply upwards of 140 million doses by the end of June, has had to pull back that supply because of the domestic emergency," Power said, responding to a question on the vaccine crisis that has been created across the globe due to the scale of the pandemic in India.