US pledges sustained help for India in tackling Covid

Patients breath with the help of oxygen masks inside a banquet hall temporarily converted into a Covid-19 coronavirus ward in New Delhi yesterday.

Senior US officials yesterday pledged sustained support for India in helping it deal with the world’s worst current surge of Covid-19 infections, warning the country is still at the “front end” of the crisis and overcoming it will take some time. The White House’s national security council co-ordinator for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell, told a virtual event on the US assistance that President Joe Biden had told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a phone call on Monday: “You let me know what you need and we will do it.” Campbell said at the event, organised by the US-India Business Council and US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, that Washington was committed to helping the world’s second most populous country get to grips with the crisis. “We all have to realise that this is not a challenge that is going to resolve (in) the next several days,” he said. Tackling the crisis, he said, was important not just for the people of India but for the US, given India’s essential role as global provider of vaccines. India is now the epicentre of the global coronavirus pandemic as a second wave of infections has driven the death toll up to almost 200,000. Yesterday, vital medical supplies began to reach the country of 1.35bn people but hospitals starved of life-saving oxygen and beds still were turning away coronavirus patients. The US and other countries pledged urgent medical aid to try to contain the emergency in India. The US state department’s co-ordinator for global Covid-19 response, Gayle Smith, added: “We all need to understand that we are still at the front end of this. This hasn’t peaked yet. “So this is going to require determination...We’re going to work really hard for some time, but we’re confident we can do it,” she said. “We anticipate that at the height of this kind of complex emergency, it’s going to be very fluid for a while as things fall into place. “We are collectively going to have to be very agile and very nimble.” Jeremy Konyndyk, global Covid-19 adviser for USAID, said the agency was concerned about the situation in countries in the same region as India and wanted to support both India’s capacity to get the situation under control and the wider region. He said the US was providing some badly needed raw materials to the Serum Institute of India to allow it to scale up the production of the AstraZeneca vaccine there. Aside from the US, countries including Britain and Germany have pledged support, while the World Health Organisation said it was working to deliver 4,000 oxygen concentrators, calling India’s plight “beyond heartbreaking”. Two Indian government sources earlier yesterday  said New Delhi expects to secure the biggest chunk of the 60mn AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses the US will share globally. On Monday, senior US officials said an agreement between the US and three of its closest Indo-Pacific partners to produce up to a billion coronavirus vaccine doses in India by the end of 2022 to supply other Asian countries were “still on track,” despite the current crisis in the country.