'My second job during COVID crisis was to be supply chain and oversight minister': EAM S Jaishankar

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar on Friday looked back at the time when the world was reeling under the Covid-19 crisis and how India distributed vaccines to several small countries at the time of need.

While addressing an event at IIT Madras, Jaishankar said, "In my entire career, I have never seen anything having a greater emotional impact on the rest of the world than giving vaccines. I've actually had people who tear up when they remember the first vaccine shipment. COVID was a bad memory. We have put it all behind us. But at that time, there were developed countries, western countries, who had stocked up eight times the number of vaccines as their population and next to them were small countries to whom they were not willing to give 10,000 doses."

He added, "We were someone who had the responsibility of 1.4 billion people. We felt at that time giving those countries 100-200 thousand doses was something which would be a gesture of solidarity, would be make or break for them. Today, we talk less about vaccines. When I go to Latin America, when I go to small island states, people from the Caribbean, people from the Pacific, say, "we have no chance of getting within smelling distance of vaccine, but for the fact that you people give it to us."

"My second job during COVID crisis was supply chain and oversight minister," the foreign minister said.

Referring to India's role during the Covid-19 pandemic, he said India was among the most efficient producers of vaccines. "We were the world's most efficient producers of vaccines... People don't realise it was very important to have that global connect and that global responsibility because the world also helped us. I think that's something we should acknowledge, that the supply chain came from outside India. The bottom line, I would say, is don't think of it as home and abroad, and that's why I'm doing this for the world when I still have problems at home," Jaishankar added.