India will do best to facilitate Covid-19 vaccines: PM Modi to Trudeau

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday assured his Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau that India would do its best to facilitate supplies of COVID vaccines sought by Canada.

Trudeau, who made a telephone call to the prime minister, said that if the world managed to conquer COVID-19, it would be significantly because of India's tremendous pharmaceutical capacity and Modi's leadership in sharing this capacity with the world, according to a Prime Minister's Office (PMO) statement.

During the call, Prime Minister Trudeau informed Modi about Canada's requirements of COVID-19 vaccines from India.

Prime Minister Modi assured his Canadian counterpart that India would do its best to support Canada's vaccination efforts, just as it had done for many other countries already.

"Was happy to receive a call from my friend Justin Trudeau. Assured him that India would do its best to facilitate supplies of COVID vaccines sought by Canada," Modi said in a tweet.

"We also agreed to continue collaborating on other important issues like Climate Change and the global economic recovery," he said.

The two leaders also reiterated the common perspective shared by India and Canada on many important geo-political issues. They agreed to continue the close collaboration between both countries in fighting global challenges like Climate Change and the economic impacts of the pandemic, the PMO said.

The leaders looked forward to meeting each other in various important international fora later this year, and continuing their discussions on all issues of mutual interest, it said.

India is one of the world's biggest drugmakers, and an increasing number of countries have already approached it for procuring coronavirus vaccines

Last week, external affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said India had sent 56 lakh doses of coronavirus vaccines under grants assistance to a number of countries while 100 lakh doses were sent under commercial supplies.

India has already rolled out a massive coronavirus vaccination drive under which two vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin, are being administered to frontline health workers across the country.

While Oxford-AstraZeneca's Covishield is being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, and Covaxin is being produced by Bharat Biotech.