Quad Vaccine Partnership On Track: Biden At The Covid-19 Summit

The United States (US) President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that the Quad alliance is on track to produce one billion doses of anti-covid vaccines by the end of 2022. He was speaking at the virtual COVID-19 Summit on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

The Quad Alliance is on track

Asserting the US' role in the fight against the virus, Biden said, "We’re working with partner nations, pharmaceutical companies, and other manufacturers to increase their own capacity and capability to produce and manufacture safe and highly effective vaccines in their own countries."

"For example, our Quad partnership with India, Japan, and Australia is on track to help produce at least 1 billion vaccine doses in India to boost the global supply by the end of 2022."

 The Quad vaccine partnership, to which President Biden was referring, was announced at the March 12 summit meeting of the Quad group of countries, comprising India, the US, Japan, and Australia. It was aimed at increasing the manufacturing capacity of Covid-19 vaccines and convergence of Covid-19 in the Indo-Pacific region. The partnership was announced before the second wave of coronavirus in India. But during the second wave, it got a setback as India realized a need for vaccines at home and even had to stop its vaccine diplomacy efforts.

EU-US vaccine partnership 

 At the summit, Biden also pledged to supply another 500 million Pfizer vaccine donations for poor nations. The donation doubles an earlier U.S. pledge of 500 million Pfizer doses to developing countries by the end of June 2022.

 The donations are being routed through the Covax initiative, led by the World Health Organization to ensure equitable access to vaccines among the poor and middle-income countries.

 "The United States is leading the world on vaccination donations. As we are doing that, we need other high-income countries to deliver on their own ambitious vaccine donations and pledges. That's why today we're launching the EU-US vaccine partnership to work more closely together and with our partners to expand global vaccinations, "Mr. Biden said.

The vaccine divide

According to the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data project, only 2% of people in low-income countries have received a first dose of the vaccine. The WHO and many global health experts have been asking developed countries to increase their share of the Covax facility. These countries were also criticized for planning to give booster shots to their population despite the WHO not being in favor of the idea. Rather, it has asked to direct those jabs towards the poor countries.

Fast-tracked efforts are needed.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its letter to the Quad countries has requested to fast track the agreement on "Partial and Temporary Waiver of Intellectual Property Rights for Products for the Prevention, Treatment, and Containment of COVID-19."  The agreement has been jointly proposed to the World Trade Organisation by 62 countries around the world, including India and South Africa. It requests that pharmaceutical companies' intellectual property rights be relaxed. That would promote technology transfer for the manufacturing of vaccines, leading to their increased production and easy accessibility.

The organization also informed us that, as of September 15, high-income countries had 20 times more access to vaccines than low-income countries. The gap was not only in vaccines but also in access to testing (92 times more access), oxygen, and other treatments, it said. The organization requested the Quad group to show its support for the TRIPs agreement at the Quad Leaders' Summit on September 24.

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