The Centre on Tuesday placed orders for 44 crore doses of Covishield and Covaxin, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the Centre would take over the state procurement quota and provide free jabs to state governments for inoculation of all above the age of 18.
While Covishield supplies would meet the target of 500 mn doses between August and December, it looks like Covaxin would miss the target of 400 mn unless the partner sites of Bharat Biotech ramp up very rapidly, reports Sohini Das.
Currently, the country is using two 'made-in India' jabs -- Covishield and Covaxin -- to inoculate its billion-plus population and has administered 20 crore doses since launching the world's largest vaccination drive in mid-January. A third vaccine, Russian-made Sputnik V, has been approved by the government and is being used on a smaller scale at present.
Zydus Cadila has agreed to bring down the price of its COVID-19 vaccine to Rs 265 a dose following persistent negotiations by the government but a final deal is yet to be reached, sources said on Sunday.
Students who have received admission to foreign universities are struggling with unexpected delays, additional living costs and scarcity of vaccine supplies.
In a discussion in Lok Sabha on the COVID pandemic, members called for ban on international flights in view of the outbreak of the Omicron strain and demanded that the government 'accept responsibility' for deaths of lakhs of people during the outbreak.
Australia's medicines and medical devices regulator on Monday formally recognised India's Covaxin, a vaccine against the coronavirus as the country's border was reopened for the first time in nearly 20 months.
The move follows the World Health Organisation's Emergency Use Listing for Covaxin, which is the second most used formulation in India.
NCP president Sharad Pawar may be busy getting ready for the INDIA Opposition bloc meeting in Mumbai with other Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) constituents, but his close friend and industrialist Dr Cyrus Poonawalla has a piece of advice for the octogenarian leader.
There were no safety concerns arising from the study data and Covovax is safe and immunogenic in the adult population, Prakash Kumar Singh, Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs at the Serum Institute of India (SII), is learnt to have said in the application sent to the DCGI.
The panel was informed that the economic impact of the second wave of viral infection was "asynchronous in its onset and wider in its spread particularly in rural hinterland", a source said.
On Tuesday, Rao said there was a possibility of the PM's visit to Pune, and if that happens, it would be aimed at reviewing the status of the vaccine candidate for coronavirus infection and to know about its launch, production and distribution mechanisms.
Experts, however, feel that given the intensity of the second wave and the high single dose coverage, India is in a good position to avoid any drastic wave in the near future.
So far, 1.1 crore doses of Covaxin have been administered. Out of which 93 lakh received the first dose and out of that 4,208 (0.04 per cent) people got the infection which is four per 10,000 individuals. About 17,37,178 people received the second dose of which only 695 (0.04 per cent) tested positive for COVID-19, Bhargava said.
'Opening everything is not appropriate ... everyone has been saying the third wave is a couple of days away'
'Wherever the Delta variant is spreading, and the population is not vaccinated, there is death and devastation.'
'If we vaccinate quickly, it could be pushed to January, February, and the longer it can be pushed, the smaller the wave is likely to be, because by that time vaccination will scale up.'
The Centre's vaccination scheme has created two classes of citizens in India -- those who got Covaxin, whose movements are restricted, and those who received Covishield and can go anywhere -- the Kerala high court said on Tuesday.
Behind each Covid vaccine are hundreds of parents, who had the courage and conviction to come forth with their children for the trial of a vaccine which was, until then, untried in that age group, reports Sindhu Bhattacharya.
'Someone may have diabetes, but at what level the disease qualifies as a comorbid condition is something a doctor will decide upon and certify accordingly.'
"The unfair and discriminatory" rules have drawn sharp criticism from the Indian Olympic Association, which has written to the Games' organising committee requesting it to ensure that mechanisms to prevent COVID-19 do not have any "adverse and detrimental impact" on performance of athletes.
The development comes after requests for indemnity and exemption from bridging trials have been made by Pfizer and Moderna to the Indian government.
A 'very large' number of Indians are likely to remain protected from Omicron or any other variant of COVID-19 and there is no need to panic, eminent virologist Dr Shahid Jameel has said.
Take a bow Natasha for looking so unignorable.
According to officials, an additional dose of vaccine is different from a booster dose.
What the UK is getting out of the Serum Institute is what India is losing. And the responsibility of the Indian State ought to have been to dictate where Serum Institute's vaccine doses should go, argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
"To make sure there isn't a Covid surge in the country, PM Modi has asked us to be careful. The government is also preparing if at the Covid cases increase. Today, mock drills are conducted across Covid hospitals in the country to make sure people get proper treatment," Mandaviya said.
'If you think you think you're going to booster yourself out of the pandemic, in COVID-19's case, you can forget it.'
To address the shortage of COVID-19 jabs in the country, the government is exploring the possibility of boosting production of vaccines, including identifying manufacturing sites for indigenously developed Covaxin outside India, sources said.
The Standing Technical Sub-Committee (STSC) of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) on Thursday recommended reducing the gap between the second and precaution doses of COVID-19 vaccines from the current nine to six months, official sources said.
The UK government is under increasing pressure on Monday to review its COVID-19 vaccine protocol in place for travellers from India, after its updated rules effective from next month failed to recognise Indian vaccines under an expanded list of countries.
The Union government on Friday said the scientific community is looking at all aspects of administering a booster dose of Covid vaccine while asserting that providing primary vaccination coverage to the maximum possible population remains the foremost goal.
'WHO issued an emergency use listing for Covovax, expanding the basket of WHO-validated vaccines against COVID-19. The vaccine is produced by the Serum Institute of India under licence from Novavax,' the world health body said in a tweet on Friday.
Reuters's Indian Photojournalists Adnan Abidi, Amit Dave, Danish Siddiqui and Sanna Irshad Mattoo were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography at Columbia University in Manhattan, October 20, 2022.
The gap between second dose of COVID-19 vaccine and the third, which is being called a 'precaution dose,' is likely to be nine to 12 months, official sources said on Sunday.
Poonawalla has been getting threats from various groups regarding the COVID-19 vaccine supplies.
The age cap for the booster shot came at a time when another highly transmissible XE variant of the coronavirus is being reported.
Representatives from seven vaccine makers -- Serum Institute of India, Bharat Biotech, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Zydus Cadila, Biological E, Gennova Biopharma and Panacea Biotech -- will be participating in the meeting.
Bharat Biotech said that it is disheartening to listen to some states complaining about company's intentions regarding supply of COVID vaccine Covaxin.
Seventy per cent of the people who received a booster dose of the Covid vaccine did not contract the disease during the third wave, according to a new study that covered nearly 6,000 people in India.
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