U.S. provides support as India becomes new epicenter of global COVID-19 pandemic
As India battles a devastating new wave of COVID-19 cases, the United States is delivering supplies worth more than $100 million to provide much needed relief to a country the U.S. considers a valuable global partner. U.S. Government assistance flights will start arriving in India today, Thursday, April 29, and will continue into next week.
In India, distraught families count their dead. Sick people are being turned away from hospitals that have run out of beds and oxygen, as the number of new cases rises to record levels each day, creating a national crisis with global repercussions. The more the virus spreads, the more chances it has to mutate and create variants that could eventually resist current vaccines, threatening to undermine other countries’ progress in containing the pandemic, experts warn.
“If we don’t help in India, I worry about an explosion of cases” around the world, said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. That’s why India’s Covid outbreak is a global problem that needs a coordinated response. ~ CNN
Just as India sent assistance to the United States when our hospitals were strained early in the pandemic, the United States is determined to help India in its time of need. In its immediate U.S. emergency COVID-19 assistance, the U.S. is providing:
- Oxygen Support: An initial delivery of 1,100 cylinders will remain in India and can be repeatedly refilled at local supply centers, with more planeloads to come. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also locally procured oxygen cylinders and will deliver them to support hospital systems in coordination with the Government of India.
- Oxygen Concentrators: 1700 oxygen concentrators to obtain oxygen from ambient air, these mobile units provide options for flexible patient treatment.
- Oxygen Generation Units (PSA Systems): Multiple large-scale units to support up to 20 patients each, and additional mobile units will provide an ability to target specific shortages. A team of U.S. experts will support these units, working hand-in-hand on the ground with Indian medical personnel.
- Personal Protective Equipment: 15 million N95 masks to protect both patients and Indian health care personnel.
- Vaccine-Manufacturing Supplies: The U.S. has re-directed its own order of Astra Zeneca manufacturing supplies to India. This will allow India to make over 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
- Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs): 1 million rapid diagnostic tests – the same type used by the White House — to provide reliable results in less than 15 minutes to help identify and prevent community spread.
- Therapeutics: The first tranche of a planned 20,000 treatment courses of the antiviral drug remdesivir to help treat hospitalized patients.
- Public Health Assistance: U.S. CDC experts will work hand-in- hand with India’s experts in the following areas: laboratory, surveillance and epidemiology, bioinformatics for genomic sequencing and modeling, infection prevention and control, vaccine rollout, and risk communication.
The United States and India will continue to work closely together to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to The White House.
The CDC reports the COVID-19 levels in India to exist at “Level 4 – A Very High Rate,” and also recommends that all travelers should avoid all travel to India.
- Because of the current situation in India even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants and should avoid all travel to India.
- If you must travel to India, get fully vaccinated before travel. All travelers should wear a mask, stay 6 feet from others, avoid crowds, and wash their hands.
(Source: The White House)
For more on the rising death toll and the COVID-19 pandemic plaguing India, see the video accompanying this article.
Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today / Follow Richard on Facebook and Twitter
