NEW DELHI, May 12: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called for streamlining World Health Organisation’s approval process for vaccines and therapeutics to keep supply chain stable and predictable. “As a responsible member of the global community, India is ready to play a key role in these efforts,” the Prime Minister said while speaking during the second Global Covid Summit.
In his address, Modi called for a people-centric strategy to tackle the Covid pandemic. Modi had participated in the first global virtual summit on Covid hosted by the US President Joe Biden on September 22 last year. The summit intends to galvanise new actions to address the challenges of the pandemic and build a stronger global health security architecture.
Modi said the Covid pandemic continues to disrupt lives, supply chains and test the resilience of open societies. He said India has the largest Covid vaccination program in the world. Nearly 90% of the adults in India have already been fully-vaccinated.
He said India had extensively used the traditional medicines to supplement fight against Covid and to boost immunity. He also underlined the need for reforming and strengthening the WHO to build a more resilient health security architecture. He said India was ready to play a key role in this effort.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation said in its latest assessment of the pandemic that the number of new coronavirus cases reported worldwide has continued to fall except in the Americas and Africa. In its weekly pandemic report released late Tuesday, the U.N. health agency said about 3.5 million new cases and more than 25,000 deaths were reported globally, which respectively represent decreases of 12% and 25%. India recorded 2,827 new cases on Thursday showing a slight dip since Wednesday.
(Manas Dasgupta)