NEW DELHI: While US president Donald Trump has been blaming China for hiding information about the spread of coronavirus, India and China, along with other BRICS countries, have decided to collaborate on projects related to Covid-19 vaccine, new technologies, epidemiological studies and genome sequencing.
Terming the Covid-19 as one of the greatest global challenges that warrants a global response, the BRICS Science, Technology and Innovation Framework Programme called for multilateral basic, applied and innovation research projects facilitating cooperation among the researchers and institutions in the consortia that consist of partners from at least three BRICS countries.
The BRICS nations account for over 25% of the world territory, more than 40% of the global population.
The thematic areas for collaboration include research and development of new technologies/tools for diagnosing Covid-19, of vaccines and drugs, including repurposing of available drugs, genomic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 and studies on the epidemiology and mathematical modelling of the Covid-19.
The collaboration will also look into artificial intelligence, information and communication technology oriented research for Covid-19 drugs design, vaccine development, treatment.
As part of the initiative, government research funding organisations from the BRICS countries have agreed to jointly establish a scheme for funding multilateral cooperative activities.
In India, the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science and Technology will be part of it while the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and National Natural Science Foundation of China will take part.