• Japan is all set to provide India a $10 million assistance for building cold chain facilities to safely store covid-19 vaccines.
• Japan will provide this assistance to India to build cold chain equipment including medical equipment like cold-storage facilities.
• Cold storage facilities will be built as ‘Last One Mile Support’.
• These facilities will ensure vaccination in each country, through United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
• Vaccines are required to continuously stored in a limited temperature range; from the time they are manufactured until the vaccination. It is because too high or too low temperatures can cause the vaccine to lose its potency, which cannot be regained or restored.
• Among the available covid-19 vaccines, stringent storage conditions are required for Pfizer & Biotech’s COVID-19 vaccine while, Moderna COVID-19 vaccine requires temperatures of -20°C at which it can remain stable for up to six months.

Japan and COVAX Facility

• To contain covid-19, common challenges that countries are facing include- ensuring equitable access to vaccines and accelerating vaccination. To do away this challenge Japan has led operationalization of COVAX facility as an international mechanism to procure vaccines.

USA’s contribution in India’s covid fight

• US announced to donate more than 70 million doses of vaccines, from a stockpile, to countries including India where cases of covid-19 had seen a surge. However, it is not yet clear which vaccines India will get from US which has stockpiled doses of AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.