India has told its international vaccine partners that the domestic demand for the doses is rising due to the sudden surge in Covid cases in the country as a result of which local needs will have to be prioritised, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said on Friday. 

“In the coming weeks and months … obviously there will be a demand spike and obviously people are preparing for it,” Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said at the Times Network’s India Economic Enclave.

“In many cases we have told our international partners that COVID rates are going up in India, we are expanding our own vaccination campaign, so we are sure you will understand that at this time we have to purpose it much more focused at where we are,” the minister explained.

India has sent more than 6 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines to as many as 76 nations so far to meet the acute shortage of doses worldwide, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Health Ministry in its daily update on Friday that over 23 lakh people were inoculated in the country during the last 24-hours taking the total number of Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the country past the 5.5 crore mark.

"A total of 5,55,04,440 vaccine doses have been given, as per the provisional report till 7 am today. Ten States account for nearly 70 per cent of the vaccine doses that were injected during the last 24 hours," the ministry said.

India continues to witness a surge in new COVID-19 cases as 59,118 fresh infections and 257 deaths were reported in the country in the last 24 hours, the Union Health Ministry informed on Friday.

With fresh 32,987 recoveries, a total of 1,12,64,637 people have recovered from the diseases so far.

Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat are the five worst hit states that account for over 80% of the fresh cases.