India ignores Rihanna barb, donates vaccine to Barbados

The Barbados Prime Minister had earlier written to Prime Minister Modi for the donation of the Indian vaccine for the Caribbean nation.

Updated on: Feb 5, 2021, 10:23:45 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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At a time when Barbadian singer-activist Robyn Rihanna Fenty has invited global focus on farmers' protest in India through a tweet, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for 100,000 doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca anti-coronavirus vaccine.

The Barbados Prime Minister had earlier written to Prime Minister Modi for the donation of the Indian vaccine for the Caribbean nation. (PTI file photo)

In a letter to PM Modi on February 4, Mottley said: “On behalf of my government and people, I wish you to express gratitude to you, your government and the people of the Republic of India for most generous donation of the Covishield vaccine (under the auspices of Oxford AstraZeneca).”

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The Barbados Prime Minister had earlier written to Prime Minister Modi for the donation of the Indian vaccine for the Caribbean nation.

Watch: Celebrities clash over farmers' protest on Delhi borders

“The Minister of Health and Wellness and the Chief Medical Officer both have confirmed that the vaccine has been approved for use in Barbados and will be administered in accordance with the manufacturers’ guidelines,” PM Mottley said in her letter.

Also read | 'Ascertain facts before rushing to comment': MEA on tweets over farmers' protest

India has a list of nearly 152 countries asking for coronavirus vaccine and is expected to supply near 16 million doses to at least 60 by March.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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