"The Indian Medical Association has requested all its 3.5 lakh members in 1,800 local branches to voluntarily come out to get vaccinated first to show the world that these vaccines are safe and efficacious," it said.
According to the World Health Organisation, 10 candidate vaccines for COVID-19 are in the clinical evaluation and 126 are in the pre-clinical stage.
Asked if the government has decided to administer the COVID-19 vaccine to the entire population free of cost on priority basis and if so, the target fixed to administer the doses, the health minister said according to Revised Guidelines for Implementation of National COVID Vaccination Program, which came into effect from June 21, all citizens aged 18 years and above, irrespective of their income status, are entitled to free vaccination at all government vaccination centres.
'It was unfair to expect him to continue to keep on supplying vaccines without being given a firm commitment or a financial grant of any sort.'
Providing data, it said UK's Public Health England has reported high vaccine effectiveness (87.9 per cent) against the B.1.617.2 variant, most reported in India, in an observational study (concluded on May 22, 2021).
Those who have recovered from COVID-19 respond faster to the Covishield vaccine and reach high antibody levels, says a study, leading to hopes that they may not need a second dose and therefore help widen India's corona immunisation cover.
The modalities of COVID-19 vaccine delivery, distribution and administration were discussed during the meeting.
While the Indian government has been procuring Covid-19 vaccines at low prices so far, manufacturers have to declare the prices of vaccines they would supply to the open market (industries, private hospitals, etc) and state governments before May 1. Sohini Das reports.
According to officials, an additional dose of vaccine is different from a booster dose.
The production of Covaxin will increase from the current 10 million doses per month to 60 million-70 million by July-August.
The EC said that the data should be deleted by health authorities once the vaccination exercise concludes.
India is not keen to 'bow down' to demands related to indemnity against legal liabilities in case any vaccine recipient develops severe adverse reactions post inoculation.
'Scientific data has proven that masks can reduce COVID-91 transmission by 53 per cent...A booster dose of vaccine, even if it works, is just a temporary fix'
The Centre has shared a set of parameters with all states and UTs to enable service providers and monitoring teams under the national COVID-19 vaccination programme to identify any fake COVID-19 vaccines so that they are not administered in the country.
India has the third highest number of billionaires in the world after the US and China, according to a new list by the prestigious Forbes magazine, which said Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani reclaimed his spot as Asia's richest person, dethroning Chinese business tycoon Jack Ma who was the richest person in the region a year ago.
The pandemic has brutally highlighted the inadequacy of India's administrative systems. And, the government has demonstrated its culpable inability to speed up vaccination in a timely manner, says Jaimini Bhagwati.
A model being considered is to have a combined cold chain approach - where the agricultural cold chain would be combined with vaccine cold chains.
The Philippines launches probe after Sanofi reveals WHO-approved dengvaxia - a dengue vaccine - aggravates symptoms in some cases.
The Indian vaccine industry largely feels there are two ways in which vaccine innovation can be spurred - one, get a high price for the product and two, have the government buy a few hundred million doses of the product at a certain price.
Kejriwal said COVID-19 vaccines should have one price and appealed to the Centre to bring down the price.
Vardhan noted that COVID-19 infection among those vaccinated would be very mild and not progress to an advanced stage.
An expert panel of India's Central Drug Authority on Tuesday recommended granting permission to Serum Institute of India (SII) for conducting phase 2/3 trials of Covid vaccine Covovax on children aged 2 to 17 years with certain conditions, official sources said.
If the government had paid enough to begin with, or if it had made serious advance purchase commitments that allowed the vaccine producers to mobilise necessary investment, then it is possible to imagine more free or subsidised vaccines such as are available in developed economies, asserts Mihir S Sharma.
A dipstick survey covering 30 villages in Rajasthan threw up some worrisome numbers. About 250 children missed their regular vaccination schedule in March alone. These numbers are alarming, since India has around 600,000 villages according to the 2011 census. Sohini Das reports.
"The concrete actions are a stern indication that Government of India is making all out efforts to increase vaccine production in the country as well as attracting foreign vaccine manufacturers to supply the required vaccine doses for national Covid vaccination programme," the ministry in a statement.
India has purchased 500 million doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine candidate, one billion from the United States company Novavax and 100 million doses of the Sputnik V candidate from Russia's Gamaleya Research Institute, according to the US-based Duke University Global Health Innovation Center.
According to the sources, there are limited prospects of J&J exporting its vaccine from the US to other countries in the near future and the "entire production" at the BE facilities in India, beginning July/August, will be handed over to the pharma giant under a contract between the companies.
The average rate of COVID-19 vaccination in the country has been 10.8 million per week. At that rate, it will take India till December 2024 to complete two billion doses.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement of providing free inoculation to all adults will entail total spending of anywhere between Rs 45,000 crore and Rs 50,000 crore. This is higher than Rs 35,000 crore that the government had budgeted.
The second dose of anti-coronavirus vaccine will be administered to healthcare workers from February 13, the Centre said on Thursday, highlighting that 45 per cent of them have been inoculated so far.
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.
With just two days to go before the COVID-19 vaccination opens for the people above 18 years and only two days after Maharashtra administered the highest number of 5 lakh doese in a day, reports of the shortage of the vaccines poured in from various parts of the state on Wednesday including Mumbai, officials said.
'Even after vaccines are given, precautions like using a mask and maintaining social distancing have to be taken.'
Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Jharkhand accused the Centre of meting out "step-motherly" treatment to them, and urged the Union government to provide them free vaccine doses to vaccinate all adults.
Choubey said till February 4 total 81 AEFIs, which is 0.096 per cent of the total beneficiaries who have been administered Covaxin, have been reported.
Owners of Pune-based Serum Institute of India, the Poonawalla's have thrown the hat to acquire the iconic Grosvenor Hotel in UK from Sahara Group.
'Whenever you roll out: effectiveness is important, operational logistics are important, side effects are important and vaccine hesitancy is important.'
In a video issued by the Health Ministry, Dr Randeep Guleria, Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) answered commonly asked questions regarding the dosage of the vaccine saying that two doses of the vaccine will have to be taken 28 days apart and protective levels of antibodies generally would develop two weeks after the second dose.
An important focus of the dry run will be on management of any possible adverse events following immunisation.
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