Ex-Indian PM Dr Manmohan Singh Tests COVID-19 Positive

Former Indian Prime Minister and senior Congress leader Dr Manmohan Singh on Monday tested positive for the highly contagious COVID-19 infection. He has been admitted to the Trauma Centre of the All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi.

This comes a day after Singh wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and suggested him five measures to control the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Singh, in his two-page letter, said that the central government should ramp up the vaccination drive by proactively supporting the vaccine makers to expand their manufacturing facilities quickly by providing funds and other concessions.

"I believe this is the time to invoke the compulsory licensing provisions in the law so that a number of companies are able to produce the vaccines under a license. This, I recall, had happened earlier in the case of medicines to deal with the HIV/AIDS disease," he had said in his letter.