Mr Sanjiv Mehta, President, FICCI said, “The Landmark of administering 150 crore vaccines in less than a year is a significant achievement in our fight against COVID-19. As mentioned by the Hon’ble Prime Minister, this has been possible only due to the collective efforts of our Health Care workers, vaccine manufacturers and all associated with the health care sector. With the recent expansion of the vaccination drive, our fight against the virus is on course and the industry is resolute to stand firm with the government in this effort.”

FICCI lauds Hon’ble PM Mr Narendra Modi for his strong leadership and grand visions. We are also grateful to the government for seamless execution of all initiatives, and assure industry’s complete support, the way we have collaborated for tackling the pandemic.

India launched its countrywide vaccination drive on 16 January 2021 with healthcare and frontline workers getting inoculated in the first phase. The second phase covered people over 60 years of age and those aged 45 and above with specified co-morbid conditions and the third phase covered all people aged over 45 years, which was initiated from 1 April.

India had crossed the milestone of 1 billion anti-Covid vaccine shots on October 21 last year, as per recent expansion of vaccination drive for 15-18 years from 3rd January 2022 and booster doses for healthcare and frontline workers from January 10 has been organized by the government.

The country has achieved many notable milestones since the pandemic started early last year. Starting from the pro-active readiness for test-track-treat, boost to technology enabled care through the roll out of Telemedicine Guidelines and the recent launch of Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission, along with constant efforts for augmenting our human resources and building healthcare infrastructure.

FICCI has been a bridge between the government and the industry through various collaborations at centre, state and local levels- whether it was for mobility or logistics, transfer of technology or tie-ups for expanding manufacturing capacities, apart from the various strategic recommendations on tackling the COVID pandemic.