Facing COVID and China, US leads billion-plus vaccine push in India

Facing COVID and China, US leads billion-plus vaccine push in India

WASHINGTON: India will produce more than one billion more COVID vaccine doses by the end of next year in an initiative launched Friday with the United States, Japan and Australia, challenging China as the four leaders held their first-ever joint summit. US President Joe Biden, who has vowed to reinvigorate alliances in the face of growing worries about China, met virtually with the three nations' prime ministers as they pledged together to defend a "free and open“ Indo-Pacific region.

"We're renewing our commitment to ensure that our region is governed by international law, committed to upholding universal values and free from coercion,“ said Biden, who like the others made no explicit, but plenty of implicit, mentions of China. Vowing to show concrete results, the so-called Quad announced that Indian company Biological Ltd. would manufacture at least one billion additional vaccine doses by the end of 2022, focusing on the single-shot, US-developed Johnson & Johnson jab that was approved Friday by the World Health Organization.

Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, called the plan a "massive joint commitment“ and said that Southeast Asia would be the priority to receive the shots, which should come well after the United States is largely vaccinated. Indian