'Dhanyawad': Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro thanks PM Narendra Modi as India dispatches 2 million vaccine doses

(Image: Reuters)

With "dhanyawad", the Indian equivalent of thanks, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the timely export of COVID-19 vaccine doses.

A shipment of 2 million doses of Covishield, the Indian variant of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, was dispatched from Mumbai on January 22.

Bolsonaro took to Twitter to laud India for the vaccine supply amidst the health crisis. "Namaskar, Prime Minister @narendramodi. Brazil feels honoured to have a great partner to overcome a global obstacle by joining efforts (sic)," he posted.

"Thank you for assisting us with the vaccines exports from India to Brazil," the President further stated in his tweet.

Namaskar, Prime Minister @narendramodi

Brazil feels honoured to have a great partner to overcome a global obstacle by joining efforts.

COVID-19 Vaccine

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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.

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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.

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Thank you for assisting us with the vaccines exports from India to Brazil.

Dhanyavaad! धनयवाद

— Jair M. Bolsonaro (@jairbolsonaro) January 22, 2021

Apart from Brazil, two million doses of Covishield were also dispatched for Morocco.

"The Covishield vaccine, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, departed from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) carrying 2 million doses to Brazil via Emirates Sky Cargo and 2 million doses to Morocco on Royal Air Maroc," said a press release by CSMIA.

India's vaccine export policy was initiated by the neighbourhood first approach, with the country supplying the first set of doses to Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh and the Maldives.