India delivered 70.70 mn Covid-19 vaccine doses to 95 countries: Govt

India has delivered around 70.70 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to 95 countries till November 22 and out of these, 12.7 million doses were given to 47 nations by the government, Union minister Jitendra Singh said on Friday.

He said the remaining 58 million were supplied by the Serum Institute of India under its commercial and COVAX obligations.

Minister for Science and Technology Singh, who chaired the 9th BRICS Science and Technology Ministers meet held on Friday, called for working towards rightful place for BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) in the Global Innovation Index, and this he said can be achieved through further strengthening the cooperation in the field of Science, Technology and Innovation.

During his interventions in different sessions, Singh informed that India under the "Vaccine Maitri" initiative is providing COVID-19 vaccines to countries around the world.

"As of November 22, 2021, India had delivered around 70.70 million doses of vaccines to 95 countries and out of these, 12.7 million doses were given to 47 countries by the government. The remaining 58 million were supplied by the Serum Institute of India under its commercial and COVAX obligations," he added.

Singh said BRICS countries must come together and innovate cost-effective, affordable, accessible, sustainable and scalable scientific solutions, as they face many similar and unique challenges.

He said BRICS is home to 41 per cent of the world population with an increasing share of this consisting of youth and added that the potential exhibited by young scientists must get its rightful place in the global arena.

Zhang Guangjun, Vice Minister of Science and Technology, China; Bonginkosi Emmanuel Nzimande, Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, South Africa; Marcos Pontes, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Brazil and Natalya Bocharova, Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education, Russia and senior officials from BRICS countries attended the meet and adopted the agenda.

Acknowledging that India has received full cooperation from all BRICS partners during its Chairship, Singh underlined that 2021 is an important landmark year in BRICS Cooperation as the grouping completed 15 years.

Singh said that the Covid pandemic provided an opportunity to understand that global cooperation was the only way forward in alleviating such global challenges and during this period, we expanded intra-BRICS cooperation by strengthening preparedness and response to the pandemic.