UN thanks India for offering 200,000 COVID vaccine doses for UN Peacekeepers

United Nations on Saturday thanked India for offering 200,000 COVID vaccine doses for UN Peacekeepers and appreciated efforts to strengthen COVAX Facility for ensuring equitable access to vaccines for all.

"India has been a global leader in pandemic response efforts. Appreciate efforts to strengthen COVAX Facility for ensuring equitable access to vaccines," TS Tirumurti, India's Permanent Representative to UN, quoted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as saying.

Guterres also thanked External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for offering 200,000 COVID vaccine doses for UN Peacekeepers.

India has supplied a total of 229.7 lakh doses of coronavirus vaccine to the global community as of last week, according to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

India on January 16 began its mammoth coronavirus vaccine rollout by administering 207,229 shots on the first day with the help of hundreds of thousands of health workers who were trained and assisted by the UN agencies.

The Central government has introduced an application named CoWIN (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Work) to monitor the entire vaccination process.

Two vaccines--Covaxin and Covishield-- have received Emergency Use Authorisation (EAU) after going through established safety and immunogenicity in a well-prescribed regulatory process and these will be administered during the vaccination drive.

Addressing a weekly briefing, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said India plans to gift vaccine doses to Oman, CARICOM countries, Nicaragua, Pacific Island states.

He further said that New Delhi plans to supply 1 crore or 10 million vaccine doses to Africa and 10 lakh to United Nations health workers under GAVI's (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) COVAX facility.

(ANI)

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