India to make Covid vaccines for Indo-Pacific

New Delhi: India will manufacture at least one billion more Covid-19 vaccine doses by the end of next year in a joint initiative announced Friday with the United States, Japan and Australia. Following the nations' first four-way summit, President Joe Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, said the so-called Quad had made a "massive joint commitment" to vaccines.

The White House in a statement said that India's Biological E Ltd would produce "at least" one billion doses by the end of next year, focusing on the one-dose, US-developed Johnson & Johnson jab.

PM Modi said the four countries were united by their democratic values and that the Quad would remain an important pillar of stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

Meanwhile, according to members of a World Health Organization (WHO) delegation to China, the Wuhan wet market is still the most likely hypothesis for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Zoologist Dr Peter Daszak, president of NGO EcoHealth Alliance which works in the field of zoonotic disease, said the team had identified a viable conduit between the wet market in Wuhan and to regions where the closest relatives of COVID-19 are found in bats.