Covid-19: US sends emergency assistance worth $100 mn to India

Virendra Pandit 

New Delhi: Reflecting the United States’ solidarity with India as it battles a new wave of Covid-19 cases, America is delivering supplies worth more than $100 million in the coming days, starting Thursday, to provide urgent relief to the South Asian country.

In addition, US state governments, private companies, non-government organizations, and thousands of Americans from across the country have mobilized to deliver vital oxygen, related equipment, and essential supplies for Indian hospitals to support frontline health care workers and the people of India most affected during the current outbreak, the US Consulate General, Mumbai, said in a White House statement on Thursday.

US government assistance flights will start arriving in India on Thursday, April 29, and will continue into next week.

“Just as India sent assistance to the United States when our hospitals were strained early in the pandemic, the US is determined to help India in its time of need.”

The United States is providing:

• Oxygen Support:  An initial delivery of 1,100 cylinders will remain in India and can be repeatedly refilled at local supply centers, with more planeloads to come.  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also locally procured oxygen cylinders and will deliver them to support hospital systems in coordination with the Government of India.
• Oxygen Concentrators: 1700 oxygen concentrators to obtain oxygen from ambient air, these mobile units provide options for flexible patient treatment.
• Oxygen Generation Units (PSA Systems): Multiple large-scale units to support up to 20 patients each, and additional mobile units will provide an ability to target specific shortages. A team of U.S. experts will support these units, working hand-in-hand on the ground with Indian medical personnel.
• Personal Protective Equipment: 15 million N95 masks to protect both patients and Indian health care personnel.
• Vaccine-Manufacturing Supplies:  The U.S. has re-directed its own order of Astra Zeneca manufacturing supplies to India.  This will allow India to make over 20 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.
• Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs):  1 million rapid diagnostic tests – the same type used by the White House — to provide reliable results in less than 15 minutes to help identify and prevent community spread.
• Therapeutics:  The first tranche of a planned 20,000 treatment courses of the antiviral drug remdesivir to help treat hospitalized patients.
• Public Health Assistance: U.S. CDC experts will work together with India’s experts in the following areas: laboratory, surveillance and epidemiology, bioinformatics for genomic sequencing and modeling, infection prevention and control, vaccine rollout, and risk communication.

The White House said that the United States and India have closely worked together to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.  US Covid-19 assistance has reached more than 9.7 million Indians across over 20 states and Union Territories, providing life-saving treatments, disseminating public health messages to local communities; strengthening case-finding and surveillance; and mobilizing innovative financing mechanisms to bolster emergency preparedness:

• Partnered with more than 1,000 Indian healthcare facilities to strengthen preparedness, including training of over 14,000 people on infection prevention and control.
• Helped keep more than 213,000 frontline workers safe — including risk mitigation training for doctors, nurses, midwives, community volunteers, sanitation workers, and others who are actively responding to Covid-19 in India.
• Launched joint public messaging with UNICEF on Covid-19 prevention that has reached more than 84 million people.
• Provided 200 state-of-the-art ventilators to 29 healthcare facilities in 15 states to care for critically ill Covid-19 patients.