US resolution calls for Biden Admin to continue COVID aid to India

Washington: With a view to ensuring COVID battling India is getting seamless medical care supply from the US, a group of lawmakers have introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives.

Congressman Brad Sherman and Steve Chabot - the two co-chairs of the Congressional India Caucus, introduced a resolution demanding the Biden Administration to pave for India getting private, in-kind medical supply donations and urgently needed medical supplies.

India is facing the worst of the second wave of the COVID where basic medical aids, including oxygen and vaccines, often run out, leading to human causalities. If the resolution is passed in the US House, supply of medical aids, including oxygen generator plants and a cryogenic oxygen tanker and containers will be resumed.

The US resolution is also seen as recognition of the people of India who are working collectively to thwart the menace of the COVID pandemic.

Rising to the occasion when India had witnessed the worst phase of the COVID, the Biden Administration took quick action to deliver urgently needed supplies to India, including oxygen support, oxygen concentrators, personal protective equipment (PPE), and raw materials for the vaccine, rapid diagnostic tests, and therapeutics.

Along with the US government, private entities in the country also acted generously to the calls of India by sending 1,000 ventilators and 25,000 oxygen concentrators to health care facilities.

It said that many countries around the world have also sent medical assistance to India to help the country defeat this devastating wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now that the United States' vaccine supply for the American people is secured, it is important for the US to continue to ramp up its efforts, working with the private sector and all possible partners, to expand vaccine manufacturing and distribution worldwide, it said.

Recognising the efforts of Indian-Americans and the US firms to support India's health care system during this time of need, the resolution calls on the President and the Secretary of State to work with partners around the world to quell the virus everywhere it persists.

It recognises the importance of India in defeating this surge in the overall global effort to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bipartisan resolution acknowledged that in the spring of 2020, when the US was amid a devastating spike in COVID-19 cases, India lifted its export ban on certain therapeutics in response to a request by the US government.