Covid-19 Related International Initiatives
The covid-19 pandemic, also known as the Coronavirus pandemic is an ongoing pandemic spread globally caused by SARS-CoV-2. This virus was first identified in the city of Wuhan, China. On 30th January 2020, the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 as public health emergency international concern and later on 11th March 2020 it was declared as a pandemic. As of 27th April 2021 more than 147miilion cases have been confirmed with more than 3.12 million deaths associated with COVID-19, hence making it one of the deadliest pandemics ever recorded in history.
COVID-19 pandemic in India
The first case of COVID-19 in India was reported on 30th January 2020 and soon the numbers started rising with daily case peaked in September. Soon the peak of the first wave started with falling with the daily reported case reaching less than 15000. India started its vaccination programme on 16th January 2021. By the first week of April, a 2nd wave hit the country with the daily cases started rising astronomically. As of 27th April with 1,76,43,310 confirmed cases and 1,97,955 deaths, India is the 2nd most affected country in the world after the USA.
Global Initiatives Regarding COVID-19
Priority was given to stop the spread of the virus by announcing countrywide lockdown measures and also the health workers of every country started working overtime to arrest the effect of the virus. WHO supplied more than 2 million PPE (personal protective equipment) kits and over a million diagnostic test kits to around 120 countries. WHO also launched multilingual e-learning courses to educate the people regarding response and preparedness towards the virus. All the countries started imposing travel restrictions and contact tracing to check the spread of the virus.
Quad Countries and their Vaccine Initiative
Quad countries are a group of 4 countries comprising of India, Japan, Australia and the USA. The first idea of this group was floated by Shinzo Abe in the year 2007 but could not be formed as Australia opted out apparently due to pressure from China.
In 2021 the first Quad leadership summit was held virtually by the four countries where there were discussions related to vaccine diplomacy. The vaccine capacity of India will be increased to 1billion doses by 2022
This is an initiative taken by the Quad Countries (India, USA, Japan, Australia) where vaccines will be developed in the USA and will be manufactured in India with financial backing from Japan, the USA with Australia financing the training and delivering of vaccines in South East Asia.
