US-India ties began to strain in April 2021 when India faced a massive spike in COVID-19 infections. The US had invoked the Defense Production Act of 1950 to ban the export of raw materials needed to produce vaccines in order to prioritize domestic vaccine production. According to The Times of India, this also caused an explosion of anti-US sentiment in India, as the U.S. had vaccine reserves and refused to share COVID-19 vaccine patents. This came after a plea by Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute of India, to lift the embargo on export of raw materials needed to ramp up production of COVID-19 vaccines, was rejected. However, in late April, right after a phone call with Ajit Doval, the National Security Advisor of India, the Biden administration stated it would make raw materials necessary for production of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine available to India, and began to send more than worth of drug treatments, rapid diagnostic tests, ventilators, personal protective equipment, and mechanical parts needed to manufacture vaccines to India, along with a team of public health experts from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The US also stated that it planned to finance the expansion of Biological E. Limited, an Indian-based COVID-19 vaccine production company. India entered negotiations with the US after it declared that it would share 60 million Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines with the world.
