At Global COVID-19 Summit, PM Modi says India has seen humanity as one family

New Delhi, Sep 23: The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented disruption. And, it is not yet over. Much of the world is still to be vaccinated .That is why this initiative by President Biden is timely and welcome, Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is visiting the United States said.

India has always seen humanity as one family. India's pharmaceutical industry has produced cost-effective diagnostic kits, drugs, medical devices, and PPE kits. These are providing affordable options to many developing countries. And, we have shared medicines and medical supplies with over 150 countries. Two indigenously developed vaccines have received "Emergency Use Authorisation" in India, including the world's first DNA-based vaccine, the PM said at the Global COVID-19 Summit.

Several Indian companies are also involved in licensed production of various vaccines. Earlier this year, we shared our vaccine production with 95 other countries, and with UN peace-keepers. And, like a family, the world also stood with India when we were going through a second wave, the PM also said.

India 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 dose so far, PM Modi said.

Over 200 million Indians are now fully vaccinated. This has been enabled through the use of our innovative digital platform called CO-WIN, he also added.

In the spirit of sharing, India has made CO-WIN and many other digital solutions available freely as open-source software. As newer Indian vaccines get developed, we are also ramping up production capacity of existing vaccines. As our production increases, we will be able to resume vaccine supply to others too. For this, the supply chains of raw materials must be kept open, he said.

With our Quad partners, we are leveraging India's manufacturing strengths to produce vaccines for the

Indo-Pacific region. India and the South Africa have proposed a TRIPS waiver at the WTO for COVID vaccines, diagnostics and medicines. This will enable rapid scaling up of the fight against the pandemic.

We also need to focus on addressing the pandemic economic effects. To that end, international travel should be made easier, through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates, the PM added.