U.S. tends to favor India over Brazil when donating vaccines – former ambassador

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The former ambassador and current emeritus adviser of the Brazilian Center of International Relations (Cebri), Rubens Ricupero, says that Brazil has chances, but is very poorly positioned to receive surplus vaccines against Covid-19 donated by the United States.

“The government doesn’t help”, summarizes the diplomat, who worked in Washington in the past. Ricupero analyzed the scenario in this Tuesday’s Valor Live.

Ricupero states that there is very little vaccine surplus in the world, most of it restricted to the United States, in addition to negligible volumes in smaller countries, such as Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

“What there is of vaccine surplus in the world is very little. Even in the United States, what there is specifically is 10 million doses from AstraZeneca. The rest [another 50 million doses] are estimates of future production, from May and June,” he says. In the ambassador’s view, however, the donation of vaccines by the US is a movement in “frank evolution.”

“The Americans were very resistant to the idea of exporting vaccines until their entire population was vaccinated. But now that has changed, although it is not yet very clear how it will happen. At first they gave the impression that they would favor the WHO’s Covax Facility consortium. Now they should use this as an instrument of direct diplomatic influence,” says Ricupero.

In his opinion, the U.S. should adhere to the notion of vaccine diplomacy, practiced since the beginning of the crisis by nations like China and India.

India, which allowed exports of ready-made vaccines and raw materials in the beginning, has regretted it with the worsening of the crisis and daily records of 350,000 new Covid-19 cases. The country, in Ricupero’s view, will be the main beneficiary of the North American donations.

“The United States should favor India in the donation of vaccines. This preference has a geostrategic component”, says the diplomat when mentioning the alliance of the USA with India, Japan and Australia, with whom they form the Quad Group (quadrilateral) in the Indo-Pacific region in order to face China. “Brazil, on the other hand, does not have as much strategic importance and this matters,” says Ricupero.

Ricupero also mentions that Brazil can buy or exchange vaccines with the U.S., unlike poorer countries, such as African nations. The strategy has already been advocated by Minister of Health Marcelo Queiroga, who is in contact with American authorities and has already given as an option the payment or advance payment of doses to be replaced later with the advancement of Brazilian production for U.S. diplomatic use.

Source: Valor