US To Send COVID-19 Vaccine Raw Materials 'Urgently Required' To Help India Tackle Surge In Infections

The U.S. will deploy supplies and other assistance to India, the White House said, following a Sunday call between the National Security Advisers (NSA) of two countries, Ajit Doval and Jake Sullivan.

What Happened: The assistance includes raw materials for the COVID-19 vaccine, Covishield, developed by Oxford University in collaboration with AstraZeneca Plc (NASDAQ: AZN) and manufactured in India by Serum Institute Of India (SII).

Material needed to produce Covishield has been identified and “will immediately be made available,” Emily Horne, a spokesperson for U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, said in a statement.

Jake Sullivan spoke to his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval, who also said that the U.S. had “identified supplies of therapeutics, rapid diagnostic test kits, ventilators and PPE suits that will (also) be made immediately available to India.”

The U.S. is also “pursuing options to provide oxygen and related supplies on an urgent basis” to help India overcome a shortage that has endangered the lives of thousands of both Covid-positive patients and those fighting other diseases. However, there was no mention of the U.S. shipping ready-to-use vaccines from its stockpiles.

Related Link: Twitter, Facebook Follow Emergency Order To Suspend Posts Criticizing Indian Government Of Mishandling Pandemic

Why It Matters: AstraZeneca hasn’t requested regulatory approval for its two-dose vaccine in the U.S., which has three other authorized vaccines to deploy from Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE) - BioNTech SE (NASDAQ: BNTX), Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA), and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ).

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is funding the expansion of manufacturing capability for BioE, the vaccine manufacturer in India, enabling BioE to ramp up to produce at least 1 billion doses COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2022.

Earlier this month, SII’s CEO Adar Poonawalla took to Twitter and appealed to U.S. President Joe Biden to lift export embargoes on raw materials.

Price Action: AZN shares are up 0.4% at $52.47 in market trading hours on the last check Monday.