'Thank you India, PM Modi': Canadians put up billboards after receiving COVID-19 vaccines

India's vaccine diplomacy is earning it many friends. Billboards thanking India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for exporting COVID-19 vaccines to Canada have been put up in Canada's Greater Toronto area. These billboards read, "Thank you India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for providing COVID vaccine to Canada. Long live India-Canada friendship."

Canada got the first consignment of Covishield from India last week. The COVID-19 vaccine has been developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca combine and is being produced by Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII). India will send another consignment of 1.5 million doses to Canada. Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that India will support Canada in its COVID-19 vaccination efforts.

Trudeau appreciated PM Modi's gesture and said if we managed to win over COVID-19 "it would be significantly because of India's tremendous pharmaceutical capacity, and Prime Minister Modi's leadership in sharing this capacity with the world."

The Prime Minister thanked Trudeau for his tweet. Prime Minister Modi tweeted: "Was happy to receive a call from my friend Justin Trudeau. Assured him that India would do its best to facilitate supplies of COVID vaccines sought by Canada. We also agreed to continue collaborating on other important issues like climate change and the global economic recovery."

Canada has ordered total 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and has received 1.9 million doses through WHO's COVAX initiative. SII-AstraZeneca's jab is the third one to be approved by Canadian health regulators following approval of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and the Moderna jab.

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