Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised that the US “will rapidly deploy additional support to the people of India and India’s health care heroes,” as the country fights a horrific Covid-19 outbreak.
Mr. Blinken tweeted late on Saturday that “our hearts go out to the Indian people” and “we are working closely with our partners in the Indian government”.
India has had four straight days of record-setting case numbers, with prime minister Narendra Modi telling his nation in a radio address on Sunday: “Our spirits were high after successfully dealing with the first wave. But this storm has shaken the nation.”
The “storm” he’s referring to is the over 300,000 new cases every day for the past four days, the most in the world since the start of the pandemic.
Authorities announced a tally of 349,691 new cases on Sunday, in addition to 2,767 deaths, both daily records.
Even as 1,002,938,540 vaccine doses had been administered around the world as of Saturday, the global number of infections hit a record number on Friday at 893,000 new cases. India made up a third of those cases on its own.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan also tweeted support for India, following Mr Blinken and writing late on Saturday: “The US is deeply concerned by the severe Covid outbreak in India. We are working around the clock to deploy more supplies and support to our friends and partners in India as they bravely battle this pandemic. More very soon.”
The announcements of aid from top US officials comes after harsh criticism of the Biden Administration for its supposed deaf ear to the rest of the world’s struggles with containing Covid-19.
The administration has been slammed for hoarding stockpiles of unused vaccines and stopping the export of equipment needed to manufacture additional doses.
Pressure is growing on the US to lift the export controls on materials and supplies that could advance India’s vaccine supply and that Indian manufacturers argue are slowing down their process.
Many fear that the official Indian death toll of 192,311 people is severely misleading and is underestimating the size of the crisis as many won’t get tested and don’t have access to healthcare.
Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, argued in a Washington Post Op-Ed on Saturday that the country of 1.3 billion people is close to a humanitarian catastrophe. He called on the administration to send oxygen and medicines and to lift all export controls.
He added that the US should start sharing excess vaccine doses with struggling countries. The US has an estimated 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine which has not yet been approved for use in the US.
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