United Nations:
President of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly Abdulla Shahid has stated he had received the two doses of the Covishield vaccine manufactured in India, as have a “large portion” of other nations about the world.
The Covishield vaccine, which has been created by British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, is manufactured in India by Pune-based Serum Institute of India.
“On vaccines, that’s a very technical question you have asked me. I got Covishield from India, I’ve got the two doses. I don’t know how many countries would say that Covishield is acceptable or not, but a large portion of the countries have got Covishield,” Mr Shahid stated at his 1st press conference right here on Friday.
He was responding to a query on no matter if any COVID vaccine ought to be recognised and thought of or the ones that have been validated by the World Health Organisation or any other group.
“And I’ve survived. But let someone else, a medical person make that call, not me,” he added with a laugh.
India has exported more than 66 million vaccine doses to practically one hundred nations by means of grants, industrial shipments and the COVAX facility. The Maldives, home nation of Mr Shahid, was amongst the 1st nations to obtain the India-made vaccines in January when one hundred,000 doses of Covishield had been dispatched to Male.
In all, the Maldives has received a total of 3.12 lakh doses of Made-in-India Covid vaccines by means of grants, industrial shipments and the COVAX facility.
The UK had initially refused to recognise Covishield, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India. However, following India’s robust criticism of the choice, the UK on September 22 amended its new recommendations and integrated the vaccine.
However, the move did not provide any relief from quarantine guidelines for Indian travellers vaccinated with two doses of Covishield. Later, British officials stated the UK has concerns with India’s vaccine certification procedure and not with the Covishield vaccine.
Under the new British guidelines that are coming into impact from Monday, completely vaccinated Indians will have to undergo 10-day quarantine as the UK has concerns with India’s Covid-19 vaccine certification.
India has decided to impose reciprocal curbs against all British nationals arriving in the nation, official sources in New Delhi stated on Friday, as the contentious challenge relating to the UK not recognising Indian vaccine certificates could not be resolved regardless of holding a series of technical-level talks.
Abdulla Shahid, who plans to convene a higher-level meeting of the General Assembly in January to take stock of the international vaccination work and equity, stated the messages that he had received so far on vaccines in listening to world leaders at the General Debate, “has been most positive from the United States, from China, from India, from many, many corners of the world, from the vaccine producers themselves”.
“And I intend to utilise the convening power of the President of the General Assembly to bring all of them together in January, and my desire is to make sure that we all come out of the January meeting with a much more optimistic timeline where hereby we will be able to vaccinate the entire world by end of 2022,” he stated.
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