Depending upon coronavirus vaccine trials, India will expand its cooperation to other countries: MEA

NEW DELHI: India’s vaccine production and delivery capacity will be used to help all humanity in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and depending upon the coronavirus vaccine trials, India will expand its cooperation to other countries, including capacity building for vaccine development production and delivery, Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday.

“As announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in United Nations General Assembly last month, India’s vaccine production and delivery capacity will be used to help all humanity in fighting the COVID-10 pandemic. India will also help all countries in enhancing their cold chain and storage capacities for the delivery of vaccines. Cooperations and discussions of clinical trials are already underway,” Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said at the weekly virtual press briefing here.

Replying to a question of the number of countries that have requested for vaccine cooperation with India, he said that cooperations and discussions of clinical trials with the neighbouring countries are already underway.

India has organised two training modules for its neighbouring countries in which about 90 health experts and scientists have participated.

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“We propose to expand these programmes to other countries. With regards to discussions on clinical trials, there was a delegation which visited Bangladesh from October 17 to 19. There were discussions between the concerned departments and in these discussions the current stage of vaccine development in India and the modalities of clinical trials in Bangladesh were discussed,” Srivastava said

“We also had virtual discussions with the concerned officials of Myanmar. As the situation to development of vaccine evolves the two sides will discuss and decide the modalities of cooperation,” he further said.

“In due course, depending upon the trials of COVID-19 vaccine in India, we propose to expand our cooperation to other countries and it will include clinical trials and capacity building for vaccine development, production and delivery,” the MEA added. (ANI)