India to send gift of COVID vaccines to Sri Lanka next week

India will be sending a "gift" of COVID vaccines to Sri Lanka next week. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has announced, the vaccine will reach the country on January 27. The island nation will get 500,000 doses of the "Made in India" Covishield vaccine and it will become the eighth country to which India is gifting COVID vaccines since it began its country-wide mega immunisation programme on January 16.

Starting Wednesday, India has gifted vaccines to seven countries in the region as part of its 'neighbourhood-first' policy -- Bhutan (150,000), Maldives (100,000), Nepal (One million), Bangladesh (2 million), Myanmar (1.5 M), Seychelles (50,000) and Mauritius (100,000).

India was so far waiting for regulatory approval from Sri Lankan and Afghan authorities. Sri Lanka's drug regulatory body -- National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) gave a go-ahead to the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine on Friday.

The Indian embassy in Sri Lanka had welcomed the development, tweeting, "This clears the way for scheduling  delivery of the vaccine from #India to #lka"

The first jabs are expected to be given to health care workers in the country. Colombo is expected to procure more India-manufactured vaccines commercially, later.

Sri Lankan healthcare personnel were among the personnel of 13 countries who India trained last week. For two days, from January 19 to 20, India trained foreign personnel in administering COVID vaccines. These were from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Bahrain, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco, Oman, Seychelles and Sri Lanka.

Amid the COVID pandemic, as part of the Indian Navy's mission Sagar 1, India has provided medicine to Sri Lanka. India supported 1990 Emergency Ambulance service also helped the country in a major way to deal with the crisis.