Vaccine Diplomacy: China to donate 3 lakh Covid jabs to Sri Lanka after India s gift to island nation Updated Jan 29, 2021 | 09:42 IST
Taken by surprise by India s vaccine outreach, China assured Sri Lanka a donation of three lakh doses of the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Sinopharm. A Sri Lankan health services worker stands in a truck next to a consignment of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine donated by the Indian government at a medical warehouse in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021 | Photo Credit: AP
Key Highlights
China to donate 3 lakh COVID vaccine doses to Lanka as India rushes jabs to South Asian nations
Vaccine diplomacy takes centerstage as China to donate Covid vaccine to Lanka after India s gift of 5 lakh jabs to island nation
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The Biden administration has vowed to increase the rate of vaccinations as COVID-19 continues to spread uncontrollably across the entire U.S., with 90,000 people predicted to die in the next four weeks. President Biden announced plans to acquire another 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech and is devising ways to allow retired nurses and doctors to administer vaccines. Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, says the Trump administration’s lies and inaction around the pandemic laid the groundwork for the current explosion in cases. He also warns that a “globalized anti-science movement” has grown stronger in recent years, spreading dangerous disinformation and threatening the public health response to COVID-19. “It’s a killer, becaus
By Liz Szabo, Kaiser Health News
Anti-vaccine groups are exploiting the suffering and death of people who happen to fall ill after receiving a covid shot, threatening to undermine the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history.
“This is exactly what anti-vaccine groups do,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious diseases specialist and author of “Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science.”
Anti-vaccine groups have falsely claimed for decades that childhood vaccines cause autism, weaving fantastic conspiracy theories involving government, Big Business and the media.
Now, the same groups are blaming patients’ coincidental medical problems on covid shots, even when it’s clear that age or underlying health conditions are to blame, Hotez said. “They will sensationalize anything that happens after someone gets a vaccine and attribute it to the vaccine,” Hotez said.
PM Modi s vaccine diplomacy is an astute move helping India take leadership in the developing world
This also helps us in balancing what China is doing quite effectively, in terms of supplying vaccines and medicines to some countries. January 25, 2021 / 02:53 PM IST
File image: Prime Minister Narendra Modi holds a face mask as he attends a a rally at Sivsagar in Assam, India on January 23, 2021. (Image: AP Photo/Anupam Nath)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said more than once that he wants India to become the pharmacy of the world. One of his motives has been that the vaccine should be available at affordable prices because we re seeing how western companies sell medicines at very, very high prices. Whereas India is able to produce them at minimal costs and this is a boon for the developing world.