India stands at forefront of vaccine development, says PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that India is now at the forefront of vaccine development for COVID-19. Mr Modi said, more than 30 indigenous vaccines are being developed in the country and three of them are in an advanced stage. He asserted that India is already working on putting a well-established vaccine delivery system in place.

Prime Minister was delivering the virtual keynote address at the inaugural function of Grand Challenges Annual Meeting (GCAM) 2020 yesterday evening. Mr Modi said, this digitised network along with digital health ID will be used to ensure immunisation of the citizens. He said, thanks to a people powered and people driven approach, India kept its COVID-19 death rate very low. The Prime Minister said, today, India is witnessing a decline in the number of cases per day and the growth rate of cases. He said, India has one of the highest recovery rates of 88 percent.

Mr Modi said, it happened because, India was one of the first countries to adopt a flexible lockdown when the total cases were just a few hundred. He said, India was one of the first to encourage the usage of masks and it also actively began to work on effective contact-tracing. He added that India was one of the earliest to deploy the rapid antigen tests. Mr Modi said, India has also innovated CRISPR gene editing technology.