'Trade restrictive measures amid COVID-19 must be temporary, transparent'

Economic ministers from 10 ASEAN-member countries, Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Russia and the US took part in the meeting.

PTI

August 29, 2020 / 06:19 PM IST

Trade (Image: Reuters)

Economic and trade ministers of 18 countries, including India, the US, and China, at the East Asia Summit agreed that trade restrictive measures taken to address the impact of coronavirus pandemic must be transparent and temporary, according to a statement.

The ministers also emphasised that trade measures in view of COVID-19 should not create unnecessary barriers or disruptions in the global and regional supply chains, the statement released after the eighth East Asia Summit Economic Ministers' Meeting (EAS-EMM), held virtually on August 28, said.

Economic ministers from 10 ASEAN-member countries, Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Russia and the US took part in the meeting.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal participated in the deliberations.

According to the joint statement, the ministers recognised the importance of facilitating essential movement of people across borders, without undermining each country's efforts to prevent the spread of the virus, to stabilise the trade and investment.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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