In India, we adopted a people-centric strategy against the pandemic. We have made the highest ever allocation to our annual healthcare budget, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the opening session of the second global Covid-19 virtual summit.

Modi said that the Covid-19 pandemic continues to disrupt lives, and supply chains and tests the resilience of open societies.

Our vaccination programme is the largest in the world. We have fully vaccinated almost 90 per cent of the adult population and more than 50 million children. India manufactures four WHO-approved vaccines and has the capacity to produce five billion doses this year, he said. 

Modi also said that we supplied over 200 million doses to 98 countries, bilaterally and through Covax. India has developed low-cost Covid mitigation technologies for testing, treating and data management. We have offered these capabilities to other countries.

"India's genomics consortium has contributed significantly to the global database on the virus. I am happy to share that we will extend this network to countries in our neighbourhood," Modi said. 

He said that in India, we extensively used our traditional medicines to supplement our fight against Covid-19 and to boost immunity, saving countless lives.

"Last month, we laid the foundation of ''WHO Centre for Traditional Medicine'' in India, with an aim to make this age-old knowledge available to the World," added Modi.