India has been reporting record daily coronavirus cases as a new wave of infections, combined with a shortage of hospital beds and vaccines, threatens to slow recovery from the pandemic.
India breached 200,000 daily infections for the first time on Thursday and the financial hub of Mumbai entered a lockdown, as many hospitals reported shortages of beds and oxygen supplies.
Many say that it is time to impose tougher restrictions quickly to try to slow the wave. The head of the World Trade Organisation laid out a series of actions on Wednesday for countries and drug makers to increase production of coronavirus vaccines and share them more widely and fairly.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala called a closed-door meeting of producers, governments, and others over inequitable access, with low-income countries administering just 0.2 per cent of 700 million global doses. Okonjo-Iweala said that concerns over cross-border supply chains, including export curbs and shortages of skilled personnel, had reinforced her view that the WTO must play a central role in the response to the pandemic.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said that the government is committed to ensuring adequate availability of Covid-19 vaccines. He was interacting with the Governors and Lieutenant Governors of States and Union territories in a video conference.
“India has become the fastest nation to reach the landmark of 10 crore vaccinations,” the Prime Minister said. Noting the positive impact of the Tika Utsav in the last four days, Modi said that in this period, the vaccination drive was expanded, and new vaccination centres also came up.