Indian Ambassador to Vietnam Pranay Verma (Photo: VOV)
“Vietnam has coped very well with the COVID-19 pandemic. Vietnam did not record any deaths until the second outbreak more than two weeks ago,” he added during a recent interview granted for the Voice of Vietnam.
According to Ambassador Pranay Verma, Vietnam has also implemented measures to ensure testing and tracing cases for isolation, and mobilized the entire Government apparatus together with society to fight the pandemic. These are factors that have contributed to helping Vietnam to control and prevent outbreaks.
Ambassador Verma admitted that although COVID-19 had caused a lot of disruptions, it could not prevent the two countries from continuing to cooperate, even at the highest level.
“On April 13, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a phone talks with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to discuss not only the COVID-19 pandemic, but also many other aspects of the bilateral relationship,” he said. “We are also sharing a lot of experiences related to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We have organized online management capacity building programs on COVID-19 and invited Vietnamese partners to join. The military medical forces of the two countries also held remote seminars to learn about each other's best practices in the fight against COVID-19.”
Sharing about the pandemic situation in India, Ambassador Verma said that with a population of 1.3 billion people, India, as of August 7, recorded 1.9 million cases, of which 1.4 million cases have fully recovered. The recovery rate in India stood at more than 68%, while the death rate fell below 2.1%, below the world average death rate of more than 5%.
“To achieve this result, the Indian Government has taken some very assertive actions, including travel restrictions that have not been reported before,” he went on to say.
He informed that India is also actively participating in vaccine research and gaining encouraging response. Being a "drugstore of the world", India produces 20% of the world's generic drugs and 62% of the global vaccines. “Therefore, India will play a leading role in COVID-19 vaccine research efforts,” he said, adding that currently, the country is providing treatment support drugs to nearly 150 countries around the world./.