Under its Vaccine Maitri initiative, India has rolled out 600,000 doses of vaccines to Sri Lanka and Bahrain on Thursday. This comes a day after the country supplied vaccines to Nepal and Myanmar as a humanitarian gesture.
The vaccines were transported in two separate flights. While 500,000 doses were transported to Sri Lanka, 100,000 were sent to Bahrain as part of country’s humanitarian gesture to help neighbours to overcome the covid-19 crisis altogether.
The arrival of vaccines hold significance in Colombo coincided with the celebration of Poya Dya which marks the first day of Buddha’s visit to Sri Lanka.
Thanking PM Modi on Twitter, Rajapaksha wrote, “Received 500,000 #COVID-19 vaccines provided by #peopleofindia at #BIA today (28). Thank you! PM Shri @narendramodi & #peopleofindia for the generosity shown towards #PeopleofSriLanka at this time in need.”
The development comes after S Jaishankar made his first foreign visit this year to Sri Lanka during January 5-7.
India started its inoculation process on January 16 with two vaccines — Covaxin by AstraZeneca and Covishield by Serum Institute — and has inoculated as many as 23,55,979 beneficiaries have received the first dose of Covid vaccine in the first phase so far. The country will send vaccines for free in the first phase to the neighbourhood countries and will then proceed the commercial supply of the vaccine. Meanwhile, the commercial supply of the vaccine has been sent to Brazil, Morocco and Bangladesh. Later, the country will supply the vaccines to South Africa and Saudi Arabia.
India has also provided 1.5 doses of vaccine to Myanmar and will send 30 million doses more as a part of agreement with Serum Institute.
