India to ‘do its best’ to get coronavirus vaccines to Canada, PM Modi tells Trudeau

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi says his country “will do its best” to help Canada get COVID-19 vaccines but stopped short of making any specific guarantee that India would ship doses to Canada.

Canada is also not among 25 countries cleared by the Indian government to receive exported doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine this month, though federal officials indicated last week Canada’s shipments weren’t expected to start arriving until at least April.

The Serum Institute of India has a contract with AstraZeneca to make at least one billion vaccine doses, and Health Canada is currently reviewing the manufacturing processes at the facility as it works to greenlight the AstraZeneca vaccine for use on Canadians.

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Modi says on Twitter that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called him today and the pair discussed vaccines, climate change and the global economic recovery.

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Earlier today, Trudeau said Canada and India are working as partners against COVID-19 but didn’t mention any plans to speak to Modi.

Trudeau and Modi have a frequently tense relationship, including Trudeau’s troubled trip to India in 2018, and more recently India’s anger over Trudeau’s public support for farmers protesting new laws passed by the Indian government.

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Meanwhile, the Canadian government, which is overseeing the nationwide vaccine rollout effort, has been facing strong criticism as it struggles to ensure there are enough immunization doses to go around.

The two companies whose vaccines have been approved for use here recently complicated matters by saying they wouldn’t immediately be able to deliver their promised number of doses due to production delays in Europe.

The Liberal government has repeatedly said both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna still intend to fulfill their promised delivery schedules and that current delays are temporary.

With files from Global News