Bhutan and Nepal on Monday eexpressed their gratitude and appreciation to India at the UN General Assembly on Monday for its “heartwarming goodwill” and “valuable support” in supplying Covid-19 vaccines under the “Vaccine Maitri initiative” that enabled neighboring countries to vaccinate their populations during the ongoing pandemic, according to news reports..
The Foreign Minister of Bhutan, Lyonpo Tandi Dorji, said that Bhutan was not spared the impacts of COVID-19 nor its induced disruptions at the high-level session of the United Nations General Assembly on Monday.
Today, more than 90 percent of our entire population has been vaccinated, which has been recognized as an unlikely success story. Dorji said in his address from the UNGA podium on the last day of the General Debate that this success was largely due to the goodwill of friends and partners, including India, whose Vaccine Maitri initiative enabled the full first round of vaccinations for our adult population.
As well as the United States, Denmark, Bulgaria, Croatia, and China, Bhutan thanked them for their generosity in providing vaccines when it was most needed. For our response to the pandemic, we are grateful to all our bilateral and multilateral partners for supporting logistics, providing financial support, medicines, and equipment. As the Bhutanese Foreign Minister explained, our success would not have been possible without your support.
In his UNGA address, Nepalese Foreign Secretary Bharat Raj Paudyal also expressed his appreciation for the vaccines provided to his country by India.
“We have successfully vaccinated 96 percent of Nepal’s population, with almost everyone receiving at least one dose,” he said. “We thank our immediate neighbours – India and China,” he said, as well as our development partners and the United Nations System.
More than 250 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been supplied to over 100 countries through India’s Vaccine Maitri initiative, including nearly 95 lakh doses for Nepal and 5.5 lakh doses for Bhutan.
