New Delhi, September 09:
US President Joe Biden is expected to call for a global summit on Covid-19 as part of a broad plan he will unveil in a speech on Thursday to rest his administration’s floundering response to the epidemic in view of surging cases and hospitalisation driven by the virulent Delta strain and vaccine hesitancy.
The summit will focus on the global Covid-19 response and vaccination distribution efforts and is likely to be held on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly (UNGA) meetings in the week of September 20, The Washington Post reported citing unidentified people familiar with the planning.
That will be the week Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in the United States for a meeting with Biden on September 23 – their first in-person encounter – and then an address to the UN general assembly on September 25, as reported by this newspaper before.
The US has been a part of a multilateral effort along with its Quad partners India, Japan and Australia to produce 1 billion doses of vaccines for distribution in the India-Pacific region. It has independently supplied millions of doses of vaccines from its stockpile to countries around the world either directly or through the WHO-led Covax programme.
