India promises more covid vaccines to Africa after Chinese announcement

India is ready to ship more covid-19 vaccines to Africa "quickly" to help tackle the Ômicron strain, the country's government said Monday-Tuesday after China pledged 1 billion doses to the continent. .

India and China have close ties with many African countries, but Beijing is pumping much more money into the region and on Monday promised to invest another $10 billion.

India, meanwhile, said it had supplied more than 25 million doses of domestically-made vaccines to 41 African countries, most of it through the global Covax vaccine delivery network.

"The government of India is ready to support the affected countries in Africa in tackling the Ômicron variant, including with supplies of vaccines produced in India," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

"Supplies can be provided through Covax or bilaterally."

The statement also said the government had cleared all orders placed by Covax for supplies of AstraZeneca's vaccine to countries such as Malawi, Ethiopia, Zambia, Mozambique, Guinea and Lesotho, as well as shipments of doses of Indian Covaxin vaccine to Botswana, but it did not say how many doses have been approved recently.

Last month, India resumed shipping Covid-19 vaccines abroad for the first time since April, when it banned exports seeking to immunize its own citizens as infections soared in the country.

Text translated using artificial intelligence.