New Delhi Feb 15 :- India is in talks with World Health Organization (WHO) for an MoU to share its CoWIN platform globally under an initiative of WHO, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla is learnt to have said at a US-hosted meeting on Covid-19.
CoWIN is India’s digital technology platform for Covid-19 vaccination.
At Monday’s meeting, convened by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Shringla also said New Delhi will be happy to extend the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) network of laboratories for genomic sequencing and surveillance in its neighbourhood, sources said.
He said India will take its experience in testing, treating and vaccinating a large population spread out in different geographies and terrains to create custom and tailor-made capacity-building and technical training programmes for front-line and healthcare workers in Asia, Africa and Latin America, sources said.
Shringla also said four WHO-approved vaccines — Covaxin, Covishield, Covovax and Janssen — and three others due for approval — Corbevax, ZyCov-D and Gennova — are being produced in India, according to sources.
He said India has a capacity to produce 5 billion doses in 2022.
Blinken hosted the Covid-19 Global Action Meeting to coordinate efforts on pandemic response, particularly in areas of vaccination, supply chain resilience and strengthening the global health security architecture.
Shringla conveyed that India has offered CoWIN as an open-source digital public good and is in talks with WHO for a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to share the platform globally through WHO’s C-TAP (COVID Technology Access Pool) initiative, sources said.
Shringla is learnt to have apprised the meeting that India has supplied more than 162 million vaccine doses to 97 countries and two UN organisations. Sources said he mentioned New Delhi’s humanitarian assistance to Myanmar and Afghanistan.
The Foreign Secretary said India is collaborating with its Quad partners to deliver a billion doses in the Indo-Pacific region in 2022, according to sources.
The meeting was attended by foreign ministers and senior representatives of several countries and international organisations. With External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on an official tour abroad, Shringla represented India at the meeting, sources said.
In the meeting, the Foreign Secretary also mentioned India’s focus on strengthening and securing global supply chains and noted that the country will rally with like-minded partners and the WHO to improve sub-optimal approval and regulatory processes that are an impediment for stable and predictable supplies, sources said.
He said India will also work for implementation of the TRIPS waiver that it co-sponsored with South Africa to diversify local manufacturing in regional markets, they said. Shringla said India has administered over 1.7 billion doses, fully vaccinating 70 per cent of its adult population and the CoWIN has handled up to 25 million daily vaccinations.
He said India is committed to playing a constructive role to help end the pandemic and that it will develop these ideas and share the next steps shortly, according to sources.
