President Donald Trump on Friday said that the United States will donate ventilators to India to support the country's fight against the coronavirus pandemic. He also said that both the United States and India are cooperating on vaccine development in order to beat the "invisible enemy."
"I am proud to announce that the United States will donate ventilators to our friends in India. We stand with India and Narendra Modi during this pandemic. We're also cooperating on vaccine development. Together we will beat the invisible enemy!" Trump wrote on his official Twitter account.
Trump had announced a team to develop and manufacture a vaccine for the novel coronavirus at 'Warp Speed' and that the US will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of the vaccine by the end of this year.
He said the 'Operation Warp Speed' is evaluating 14 vaccine candidates and that USD 10 billion dollars will be put into the project, which will be run by a four-star Army general Gustave Perna and the former GlaxoSmithKline vaccine head Dr. Moncef Slaoui.
"I have very recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine and this data made me feel even more confident that we'll be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020 and we will do the best we can," Trump said during a press conference on Friday.
On May 10, India's Ambassador to the United States, Taranjit Singh Sandhu had told that both US and India are engaged in "close" cooperation on exchange of information regarding Covid-19.
He had also highlighted that there are at least three possible vaccines for coronavirus on which Indian and American compes are working together.
The United States has the highest case count in the world, 1,427,867, including 86,386 fatalities.
Meanwhile, India's COVID-19 count reached 81,970 including 51,401 active cases and 2,649 deaths. 27,919 patients have been cured/discharged so far.
( With inputs from ANI )