PM to participate in Global Covid Summit on Biden’s invitation

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will participate in the Second Global Covid Virtual Summit on Thursday at the invitation of US President Joe Biden. The PM will deliver his remarks in the summit’s opening session on the theme “Preventing pandemic fatigue and prioritizing preparedness”, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Wednesday. Prime Minister Modi had also participated in the first Global Covid virtual Summit hosted by Biden on 22 September 2021.

The MEA said India is playing a key role in ongoing global efforts to combat the pandemic by supplying safe and affordable vaccines, medicines, development of low-cost indigenous technologies to test and treat, genomic surveillance, and capacity building for health care workers. “India is also proactively engaged in multilateral fora with the objective of strengthening and reforming the global health security architecture with WHO at its centre,” it said.

The second Global Covid-19 Summit would be held on 12 May, the White House and its partners had announced earlier, in an effort to bolster cooperation to end the pandemic and prepare for future health threats. “The emergence and spread of new variants, like Omicron, have reinforced the need for a strategy aimed at controlling Covid-19 worldwide,” the White House had said in a news release with the Group of Seven and Group of 20 nations.

The summit will build on efforts and commitments made at the first global summit in September, including getting more people vaccinated, sending tests and treatments to highest-risk populations, expanding protections to health care workers and generating financing for pandemic preparedness, the statement read.