New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday addressed the Global COVID-19 Summit and said the world needs to focus on addressing the economic effects of the COVID pandemic and for this purpose, the international travel should be made easier through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates.
“We also need to focus on addressing the pandemic’s economic effects. To that end, international travel should be made easier, through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates,” PM Modi said.
The statement from PM Modi comes at a time when confusion prevailed over the travel advisory issued by the UK raising concern over the vaccine certificates of Indian travellers.
We also need to focus on addressing the pandemic’s economic effects. To that end, international travel should be made easier, through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates: PM Narendra Modi at Global #COVID19 summit pic.twitter.com/MXrQfq9Ail
— ANI (@ANI) September 22, 2021
Talking about India’s robust vaccine drive, PM Modi said the country is now running the world’s largest vaccination campaign. “Recently, we vaccinated about 25 million people on a single day. Our grassroots-level healthcare system has delivered over 800 million vaccine doses so far. Over 200 million Indians are now fully vaccinated.” PM Modi added.
He also stated that as the newer Indian vaccines get developed, the government is also ramping up production capacity of existing vaccines. Moreover, as the production increases, India will be able to resume vaccine supplies to others too.
“This has been enabled through the use of our innovative digital platform called CoWIN. In the spirit of sharing, India has made CoWIN & many other digital solutions available freely as open-source software,” PM Modi said.
PM Modi said last year, India shared vaccine production with 95 other countries and with UN peacekeepers. “Like a family, the world also stood with India when we were going through a second wave. For the solidarity and support extended to India, I thank you all,” he added.
Saying that the COVID pandemic has been an unprecedented disruption and it is not yet over. PM Modi said that much of the world is still to be vaccinated and this is the reason why this initiative by President Biden is timely and welcome.
