Covid Diplomacy 2.0 a Different order of Tasks Indian diplomacy 1134 will have to handle the fallout of the vaccine collapse and bio-research regulations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words on Buddha Punrima, that in times to come the planet will remember events as either precovid or post covid could not hold truer than for India’s diplomatic structure worldwide. In the past month, the focums for the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and Missions aborad has shifted. While the focus in 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic, was on coordinating exports of CVOID-19 medicines, flights to repatriate Indians aborad (the VAnde Baharat Mission) after the lockdown, and then exporting vaccines worldwide Vaccine maître after the second wave, covid diplomacy 2 has a different order of tasks, both in the immediate and the long term. The health crisis The immediate imerative was to deal with oxygen and medicine shortages that claimed the lives of thousands in the matter of a few weeks across the country. In Delhi alone, more thatn 3,000 people died in the last week of April, including some from Delhi’s diplomatic community, which comprises officials, retired dioplomats and foreign diplomats. The Ministry of External Affairs had had to deal with internal health concerns while galvanising help from aborad for others. It did not help that medical protocols to treat COVID-19 have changed conmstantly; if the first rush was about bringing in Remdesivir and favipiravir from the United States and Russia, Indian missions are now requesting black fungus medications, as the previous ones have been dropped from the protocol. Despite all this, the Ministry of External Affaris has completerd the task of brining in supplies in a timely manner, and with success. Handling vaccine shortages The rest of the year, if not much of 2022 will focus on bringing in vaccines. The shortages of vaccines in the country has arisen from three factors: the failure of the Government to plan and place prcurment orders in time; the failure of the two India-based companies to produce vaccine does they had comminted to, and the MEA’s focus on exporting , not importing, vaccines between January and April this year. The challenge now for diplomats has been made all the more imperative by these failures, and much harder as the visit of the External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, to Washington last week showed. With the companies manufacturing AstraZeneca and Sputnik-V Stretched as far as future production is concerned, and Chinese vaccine a non-starter given bilateral tensions, it is clear that the Narendra Modi government is looking