United Nations: Abdullah Shahid, president of the 76th session of the United Nation Covidshield vaccine, as have a “large portion” of other countries around the world.
The Covishield vaccine, developed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, is manufactured in India by the Serum Institute of India, based in Pune.
“On vaccines, it’s a very technical question you’ve asked me. I’ve got Covishield from India, I got two doses. I don’t know how many countries will say CoveShield is acceptable or not, but that’s a big part of it.” Countries have got a coveshield,” Mr Shahid said at his first press conference here on Friday.
He was responding to a question whether any COVID vaccines should be recognized and considered or those that have been validated by the World Health Organization or any other group.
“And I survived. But let someone else, a medical person, make that call, not me,” he said with a laugh.
India has exported over 66 million vaccine doses to nearly 100 countries through grants, commercial shipments and the COVAX facility. The Maldives, Mr Shahid’s home country, was one of the first countries to receive an India-made vaccine in January, when 100,000 doses of Covishield were sent to Male.
In all, Maldives has received a total of 3.12 lakh doses of made-in-India COVID vaccines through grants, commercial shipments and the COVAX facility.
The UK initially refused to recognize Covishield, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India. However, following India’s strong criticism of the decision, the UK revised its new guidelines on 22 September to include the vaccine.
However, the move did not provide any relief from the quarantine rules for Indian travelers who were vaccinated with two doses of Covishield. Later, British officials said the UK had a problem with India’s vaccine certification process and not the Covishield vaccine.
Under new British rules that come into effect from Monday, fully vaccinated Indians will have to undergo a 10-day quarantine as the UK has issues with India’s Covid-19 vaccine certification.
India has decided to impose reciprocal sanctions against all British nationals entering the country, official sources in New Delhi said on Friday, as a series of technical talks were held to address the contentious issue related to the UK not recognizing Indian vaccine certificates. could not be resolved in spite of doing this. Talks.
Abdullah Shahid, who is planning to convene a high-level meeting of the General Assembly in January to take stock of the global vaccination effort and equity, said the messages on vaccines he has received so far in listening to world leaders in the general debate. “The most positive has been from the vaccine producers themselves, from the United States, from China, from India, from many, many corners of the world”.
“And I intend to use the convening power of the President of the General Assembly to bring them all together in January, and my desire is to ensure that we all come out of the January meeting with a more optimistic timeline where we By this we will be able to vaccinate the whole world by the end of 2022.