'No request from Pakistan for supply of Indian-made COVID-19 vaccines': MEA

On Friday, the Ministry of External Affairs made it clear that the Pakistan government has not requested the supply of novel coronavirus vaccines manufactured in India. This comes even as India has sent vaccines as grant assistance to other neighbouring countries such as Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar. On the other hand, Pakistan which is currently witnessing a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has approved China's Sinopharm vaccine and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use.

A day earlier, it was revealed that China will gift 0.5 million doses of Sinopharm vaccine to Pakistan by the end of January. This was announced after Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi's telephonic conversation with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. Till now, Pakistan has recorded 5,29,639 confirmed novel coronavirus cases out of which 4,83,714 patients have recovered while 11,224 fatalities have been reported. 

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Elaborating on India's vaccine diplomacy drive, MEA official spokesperson Anurag Srivastava added, "On the first day, 1.5 lakh doses of vaccines were supplied to Bhutan and 1 lakh doses to Maldives as grant assistance. Yesterday, we supplied 10 lakh doses to Nepal and 20 lakh doses to Bangladesh. Today, consignments of 15 lakh doses for Myanmar, 1 lakh doses to Mauritius and 50,000 doses to Seychelles have been airlifted and in fact, have already reached Myanmar and Seychelles some time ago. As stated earlier, supplies as grant assistance to Sri Lanka and Afghanistan will be undertaken after receiving confirmation of regulatory clearances from these two countries."

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India's COVID-19 vaccination journey

On January 3, the Drugs Controller General of India accepted the recommendations of the Subject Expert Committee of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, paving way for the approval of COVISHIELD and COVAXIN. Manufactured by the Serum Institute of India with technology transfer from Oxford University-AstraZeneca, COVISHIELD is a Recombinant Chimpanzee Adenovirus vector vaccine with its overall efficacy of 70.42 per cent. On the other hand, COVAXIN is a Whole Virion Inactivated Corona Virus Vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR and NIV.

Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan has made it clear that all the recipients of this vaccine will be tracked and monitored as if they are in clinical trial mode. On January 16, PM Modi launched the pan-India rollout of the novel coronavirus vaccination drive via video conferencing. In the first phase, 3 crore frontline workers shall be vaccinated followed by the people aged above 50 years and the under-50 population group with co-morbidities. A total of 12,72,097 beneficiaries have been vaccinated for the novel coronavirus in 24,397 sessions held across the country as of 6 pm on January 22. 

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