Coronavirus pandemic live news update: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Wednesday that international travel should be made easier through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates, amid several countries adopting different sets of rules to allow foreigners to enter their territory in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In his video remarks at the Global Covid Summit hosted by US President Joe Biden, Modi also said India is ramping up production capacity of existing vaccines and the supply chains of raw materials must be kept open so that vaccine supplies to other countries can be resumed.
“We also need to focus on addressing the pandemic’s economic effects. To that end, international travel should be made easier, through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates,” Modi said.
His remarks comes on a day when the UK government issued an updated international travel advisory to include AstraZeneca Covishield among the eligible COVID-19 vaccine formulations but kept India out of the 18 countries on an approved vaccinations list, requiring Indians to follow rules set out for “non-vaccinated” travellers. Despite the inclusion of Covishield, Indian travellers are not exempt from the quarantine rules under the UK’s new international travel norms that will come into force from October 4.
He added, “India is now running the world’s largest vaccination campaign. Recently, we vaccinated about 25 million people on a single day. Our grassroots-level healthcare system has delivered over 800 million vaccine doses so far. Over 200 million Indians are now fully vaccinated…Like a family, the world also stood with India when we were going through a second wave. For the solidarity and support extended to India, I thank you all…The pandemic has been an unprecedented disruption and it is not yet over. Much of the world is still to be vaccinated. That is why this initiative by President Biden is timely and welcome.”
Earlier on Wednesday, the Centre told the Supreme Court that the National Disaster Management Authority has recommended ex gratia of Rs 50,000 to be given to kin of those who died due to Covid-19. The Centre further said that ex gratia will be provided by from State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) and subject to the cause of death being certified as Covid-19.