New York, USA – The President of the United Nations General Assembly and Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid on Saturday said that he received the Covishield vaccine manufactured in India.
Shahid said that he received two doses of the Covishield vaccine manufactured in India by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India as did a large portion of the world population.
While Shahid added that he has survived, he asked to let someone else, a medical person make the call on whether all Covid-19 vaccines must be recognized or only the ones that have been recognized by WHO or other groups.
A large portion of the Maldives population were also vaccinated with the Covishield vaccine, since Maldives starting the vaccination drive with 100,000 Covishield vaccine doses donated to Maldives from India.
The Maldives has used over 300,000 Covishield doses to vaccinate the eligible population. Meanwhile, India has reportedly exported over 66 million vaccine doses to nearly 100 countries.
The UK and Indian governments are at odds after UK refused to recognize Covishield vaccine. UK has since recognized the Covishield vaccine, however, the UK has approved the vaccination certification from select few countries.
Travel guidelines effective October 4, by the UK government states that individuals will qualify as vaccinated either from an approved vaccination programme in the UK, Europe, USA or UK vaccine programme overseas or with a full course of the Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna or Janssen vaccines from a relevant public health body in Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Dominica, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan or the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Abdulla Shahid plans to hold an assembly in January 2021 to address vaccine equity and access, with world leaders and leading experts in the field. Shahid states that he is receiving positive responses from leading countries and vaccine manufacturers.
