On the 14th of February, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken convened a virtual Global Action Meeting on COVID-19 with the objective of coordinating global action on pandemic response. India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla represented India, given the absence of India’s EAM who was on an official visit to the Philippines. The meeting was attended by Foreign Ministers and senior officials from different countries and international organisations.
India produces four vaccines – COVAXIN, COVISHIELD, COVOVAX and JANSSEN that have been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO). But three other vaccines – CORBEVAX, ZyCov-D and Gennova are due for approval. India believes that it can produce 5 billion doses in 2022. India has already supplied over 162 million vaccine doses across 97 countries and aims to deliver over a billion doses in the Indo-Pacific region in 2022.
FS Shringla also shared how India has conducted 17 training modules for more than 60 countries focused on the entire spectrum of COVID management. He said, “We have administered over 1.7 billion doses, fully vaccinating 70% of our adult population. Our digital certification platform CoWin has handled upto 25 million daily vaccinations and been instrumental to our efforts.”
