PremiumNEW DELHI: Japan will provide India a $10 million assistance to build cold chain facilities for safe storage of vaccines, a statement from the Japanese embassy said on Friday.
"This assistance will provide India with cold chain equipment including medical equipment such as cold-storage facilities, as ‘Last One Mile Support’ to ensure vaccination in each country, through the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)," the statement said.
"In order to contain covid-19, ensuring equitable access to vaccines including in developing countries and accelerating vaccination is the common challenge for the international community. Japan has led operationalization of the COVAX facility as an international mechanism for the procurement of vaccines," it said.
The US announced this month that it will donate more than 70 million doses of vaccines, from a stockpile, to countries across the world including India that had seen a surge in cases of covid19 as well as for generally inoculating populations against the pandemic. This comes as countries detect more variants of the coronavirus that have now been deemed more virulent. It is not yet clear which vaccines India is likely to get from the US which has said it has stockpiled doses of AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
While AstraZeneca doses do not need special refrigeration facilities, vaccines like those manufactured by Pfizer do which is where assistance like what Japan has extended is expected to come handy, say Indian officials. India has so far used the Oxford-AstraZeneca developed Covishield to inoculate its population alongwith the indigenously made Covaxin. Russia’s Sputnik vaccine has also received the clearance from Indian regulators for use for inoculating people.
"Based on its experience in helping to build medical supply networks that reach every corner of developing countries, Japan will continue to extend support to deploy vaccines to every person in the world with a view to containing COVID-19 as quickly as possible," the Japanese statement said.
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