India is ready to produce over 5 billion Covid vaccine doses next year to help the world in the fight against the pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at a G-20 Summit session on Saturday and asserted that it was necessary that the WHO approves Indian vaccines at the earliest.
The prime minister in his intervention at the session on “global economy and global health” also flagged the issue of facilitating international travel and talked about the mechanism of mutual recognition of vaccine certification as a means of achieving this, according to the text of his intervention shared by his office.
Briefing reporters on Modi’s intervention at the closed-door session, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said, “The PM conveyed that India has not only vaccinated over a billion of its citizens but more important is that we are ready to produce over 5 billion vaccine doses by end of next year.”
This, Shringla said while quoting Modi, “obviously will be available not only for our citizens (but for) the rest of the world, and this is our own contribution to reducing…vaccine inequities, especially in the developing world”.
He said, “We also believe that WHO’s approval, the emergency use authorization, for Covaxin vaccine pending with them would facilitate this process of our assisting other countries.”
The Prime Minister stressed on the need for resilient global supply chains and invited G-20 countries to make India their partner in economic recovery and supply chain diversification.
