NEW DELHI: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said that democratically-elected governments at the Centre and the states had executed the Covid-19 vaccination drive at a rapid pace and ramped it up before the Omicron variant hit the country late last year, as the government was prepared to face the challenge of high infections.
“India could stand up to face the challenge because of the preparedness of a democratically elected government… Many countries, including China, which had obtained the WHO approval for Covid vaccines much earlier than India, are seeing resurgence of the pandemic. India, however, obtained WHO approval much later after repeated trials and scrutiny,” she said at the convocation ceremony of The Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University in Chennai.
The statement comes at a time when China is witnessing a massive surge in Covid-19 infections with health experts raising doubts over efficacy of the Chinese vaccines and its policy which did not focus on vaccinating senior citizens. While China had claimed to have ramped up vaccination and several countries, especially those in West Asia, got into exclusive deals with high level of infections even among the vaccinated these vaccines were junked in favour of those released by global pharma giants, while India relied on the homegrown ones.
Sitharaman said globally, India is the “pharmacy of the world”. “We produce medicines which are so sought after by many countries for two reasons: global standard with which they’re manufactured and economy (the cost) of the medicine,” she said.
She said India supplied around half the demand of generic medicines required by Africa, 40% of demand for generics in US and 60% of global vaccines. Similarly, 70% of WHO’s vaccines on essential immunisation scheme are supplied by Indian firms she said.
