Mr. Chair,

Thank you for giving us the floor. I extend to you warm felicitations on assuming the Chair of the MX1 meeting of the BWC and assure you of my delegation’s full support and cooperation. I wish to express our sincere appreciation to the BWC ISU for their support to us throughout the year.  We thank the delegations of the United States and Germany for their presentations and their valuable proposals.  We also commend efforts by various State Parties such as one suggested by Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.

The Covid-19 pandemic has valuable lessons for Member States to undertake sustained efforts under Article X of the Biological Weapons Convention. Today’s meeting assumes great importance as this will be the final time that we will be meeting in Experts’ format before the important Ninth Review Conference of the Convention, scheduled for next year.

Mr.Chair,

India attaches high importance to the full and effective implementation of Article X, that calls on Member States in a position to do so, to cooperate in contributing individually or together with other States or international organizations to further development of, and application of scientific discoveries inthe field of bacteriology (biology) for the prevention of disease, or for other peaceful purposes.

Equitable benefits for States Parties, in particular developing countries, resulting from the effective implementation of Article X, will also help in realizing universal adherence to the Convention.

India’s philosophy teaches to see the world as one family and during this pandemic India has tried to live upto this teaching.

India has both extended and benefitted from international cooperation and assistance and we express our most sincere gratitude to all those countries who helped us in the time of need. I wish to briefly highlight some of the international cooperation and assistance efforts undertaken by India during the Covid-19 pandemic, in the context of our discussions.

• India’s role in vaccine production, delivery during the pandemic is indeed well known to the international community. India had supplied almost 66 million vaccine doses to more than 95 countries as of May 2021.
• India had earlier supplied hydroxychloroquine, Remdesivir and paracetamol tablets, as well as diagnostic kits, ventilators, masks, gloves and other medical supplies to a large number of countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. India supplied healthcare products to over 150 countries in the face of daunting logistical challenges.
• India has also provided training to several neighbouring countries to enhance and strengthen their clinical capabilities, under the Partnerships for Accelerating Clinical Trials (PACT) programme. Separately, several training courses have been organized for healthcare workers and administrators of partner countries under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme, sharing our experience in dealing with the pandemic.
• India’s ITEC programme has also conducted a number of virtual events on good practices during Covid-19 pandemic in which several ITEC partner countries have participated and benefited.
• India helped with laboratory testing of samples from Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh and other countries as inter country requests in the early days of the pandemic when kits were not available;
• India has madeavailable a large amount of training material/ guidelines/SOP on Biosafety practices of COVID 19 testing and sample handling, available in public domain, in the website of the Indian Council of Medical Research.
• The Government of India partnered with Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (DIIS), (Australia) to support development of immune-therapeutics, animal models/in vitro models and assay development for testing of vaccines and therapeutics. These efforts were supported by another joint opportunity created with BMBF Germany to fund development of Phytotherapy with a focus on antiviral effects. Collaboration with SNSF, Switzerland under the Indo-Swiss Joint Research Programme (ISJRP) was launched to support systems medicine including fundamental systems level studies about epidemics or pandemics.
• Government of India also initiated BRICS STI Framework Programme in Response to COVID-19. This initiative was designed to support development of diagnostic devices, vaccines, drugs, and repurposed drugs for COVID-19. Considering the need of understanding the disease and epidemic better, proposals were also invited in the area of genomic sequencing, epidemiology, co-morbidities, clinical trials, and public health infrastructure.
• India also quickly responded with a joint co-funding opportunity with European Commission to find rapid solutions, development of new-age healthcare, medical and manufacturing technologies, and contemporary healthcare preparedness platforms to mitigate emergencies like COVID-19.
• Government of India, as a part of its visionary alliance “Ind-CEPI” aimed to support Indian vaccine development aligned with the global initiative of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI); accelerated the development of vaccine candidates and their clinical validation.
• India was also pro-active in launching COVID-19 Ignition Grants and Indo-U.S. Virtual Networks for COVID-19 under The United States-India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) to support S&T based entrepreneurial initiatives; and Virtual Networks to allow Indian and US scientists and engineers currently engaged in COVID-related research to carry out joint research activities through a virtual mechanism.

Mr. Chair,

We hope that our discussions today will be further useful in achieving tangible outcomes at the upcoming Review Conference.

I thank you.