At the United Nations Security Council, India on Monday underlined the need for an effective mechanism to address global inequity in Covid-19 vaccines.

The UN Security Council, under the French Presidency, held closed consultations on Resolution 2565 on the coronavirus situation.

The council adopted this resolution, recognising the role of extensive immunisation against the coronavirus as a global public good for health. It highlighted the need to “develop international partnerships, particularly to scale up manufacturing and distribution capabilities, in recognition of differing national contexts”, according to a UN press statement.

At the consultations, New Delhi stressed on the importance of a vaccination programme to tackle mutations of the virus, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador TS Tirumurti, said in a tweet. He also called for responding to public hesitation about vaccines through facts.

On 22 July, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Health Organization and the University of Oxford released data on the vaccination coverage globally.

They noted that vaccine inequity will have a lasting and profound impact on socio-economic recovery in poor and lower-middle income countries.

“An acceleration in scaling up manufacturing and sharing enough vaccine doses with low-income countries could have added $38 billion to their GDP forecast for 2021 if they had similar vaccination rates as high income countries,” said a statement by the global health body.

Currently, there is a massive gap between wealthy and poorer countries in terms of access to vaccines. While Canada has procured more than 10 doses for every resident, Sierra Leone’s vaccination rate has barely crossed 1% on June 20, AP reported.

Earlier this month, several states in India reported vaccine shortages, including Delhi, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.