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By Rupam Jain and Neha Arora
NEW DELHI, April 19 (Reuters) - India is hopeful the United
States will soon lift a ban on vaccine raw materials that has
threatened to slow output of shots in the country, two Indian
government sources told Reuters on Monday, after the foreign
ministers of the two nations spoke.
One of the officials said the administration of President
Joe Biden had told India that its request was being considered
and would be acted upon "at the earliest".
India's foreign ministry said it did not have anything more
to add than Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar's tweet
that he and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had
discussed, among other things, "issues pertaining to our health
cooperation".
The White House has invoked the wartime powers of the
Defense Production Act to preserve vaccine raw materials for its
own companies, but the Serum Institute of India (SII), the
world's biggest vaccine maker, has said this went against the
global goal of sharing vaccines equitably.
India is currently facing the world's worst surge in
coronavirus infections, which has led to a clamour for vaccines.
India, with the world's biggest vaccine-making capacity, has
also stopped major vaccine exports to meet local demand.
The potential movement on raw materials comes days after the
SII chief executive tweeted directly to Biden to end the supply
curb.
"U.S. needs to lift restrictions for APIs without which
there cannot be vaccines for all," said one of the sources,
referring to active pharmaceutical ingredients.
SII is licensed to make the AstraZeneca shot as well another
developed by U.S. company Novavax.
The U.S. embassy in New Delhi and SII did not immediately
respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours.
(Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani and Euan Rocha;
Writing by Krishna N. Das, Editing by William Maclean)
