'We are learning from every patient who is admitted, treated and discharged.'
Johnson will be only the second British leader since Indian independence to attend the annual Republic Day parade in New Delhi as Guest of Honour, after former prime minister John Major in 1993.
'You can still acquire the COVID-19 virus even if you are vaccinated.' 'But if you develop the disease, (after being vaccinated) the likelihood is that it will be mild.' 'It just makes sense to continue to take precautions, because you may be around a lot of unvaccinated people.'
The Union government's role and the prices announced by the vaccine makers raises far too many disquieting questions, observes Prosenjit Datta.
As India launched the world's largest vaccination drive against the coronavirus pandemic, showing the light at the end of a 10-month tunnel that upended millions of lives and livelihoods, here are some of the quotes from politicians across parties and other people who took the jab:
Pharma, insurance and consumer goods companies try to tap the business opportunity
'We must not compromise with the standard, the quality. We don't need to be the first to launch a drug but what we need is a Made in India vaccine that the entire world can rely on'
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is also being produced as part of a tie-up by the Serum Institute of India.
What is foreign policy worth if it stands disconnected from domestic realities? Make no mistake, the horrifying visuals of the human suffering in metropolitan India is only the tip of the iceberg. The vast swathes of the hinterland are heaving with untold sorrows, notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
However, in two different dose regimens, the vaccine's efficacy was 90 per cent in one and 62 per cent in the other.
India's COVID-19 fatality rate has dropped significantly to 2.43 per cent from 3.36 per cent on June 17 due to effective clinical management of coronavirus cases, the health ministry and asserted that the country has handled the pandemic 'relatively well'.
Loud applause and cheers rang out as the first jabs were administered to frontline workers at hospitals and healthcare centres across the country on Saturday at the start of the gargantuan COVID-19 vaccination exercise, hailed as a 'momentous' occasion in India's fight against the pandemic.
You need, first of all, to figure out how we messed it all up so badly. You need to fix accountability. None of that is happening, says Vir Sanghvi.
'He came back from the US only to work for his country.' 'He has invested his fortunes to build this company and is married to his work.' 'Rarely does one see such commitment.'
India is in the midst of its biggest crisis since Independence. It is a national emergency and begs to be dealt with. Politics can wait. Lives need to be saved. We need to vaccinate India at a pace faster than any country in the world, asserts Ramesh Menon.
The Padma Bhushan was conferred on 17 personalities including N Chandrasekharan, chairman of Tata Sons, Krishna and Suchita Ella of Bharat Biotech, Cyrus Poonawalla, Satya Nadella, chairman of Microsoft, Sunder Pichai, chairman of Google.
Indian Council of Medical Research Director General Balram Bhargava said the purpose of the COVID vaccine drive would be to break the chain of viral transmission.
With final preparations underway and the vaccine set to arrive in the national capital in the next couple of days, Rohit Datta, who was the first person to be diagnosed with coronavirus infection on March 1, said "it feels surreal".
'The future looks quite bleak unless we ramp up testing and start vaccinating on a war footing.'
The Indian State has low operational capabilities. Individuals will have concerns about material that flows through the government, on questions of purity, perfection of the cold chain, and correctness of procedures at the frontline. Even if a government programme is able to solve all these problems, it will be limited in scale-up. The passion, management capabilities, and response to local conditions, which will be found with tens of thousands of ground-level initiatives, Individuals will have concerns about material that flows through the government, on questions of purity, perfection of the cold chain, and correctness of procedures. Even if a government programme is able to solve all these problems, it will be limited in scale-up, argues Ajay Shah.
The second phase of Covid-19 vaccination in India will begin from March ,1 in which people above 60 years of age and those above 45 years of age with comorbidities will be vaccinated, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Wednesday.
Triumphalism, premature declaration of victory meant no one checked if India had enough vaccines, oxygen, remdesivir, bringing us back to a crisis where we need foreign aid after four decades, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
'We should start giving this vaccination immediately to doctors, nurses etc and also to the elderly.'
'This is a tragedy that must be stopped.'
To build one's political and ideological arguments on the dead bodies piling up outside our crematoriums is despicable and breaches the basic tenet of human civility, argues Vivek Gumaste.
'Your body will be able to deal with Omicron at any time, but it depends (on when) if you are vaccinated.'
Interacting with state chief ministers, Modi underscored the enormity of what he described as the world's biggest vaccination exercise, which begins from January 16, saying over 30 crore citizens will get the jabs in the next few months in India against only 2.5 crore people vaccinated so far in over 50 countries in around a month.
'I'll give it to the vaccine manufacturers without guarantees, take the payment in advance and give me the supplies.' 'The moment you give me one lot of supply, I'll give you more.'
'Social distancing, wearing masks and hygiene should be practised more strictly.'' 'People should not assemble in close spaces as the micro droplets may hang in the air and can last for a longer time.'
The Centre stressed that the next three weeks will be critical for the country reeling from the worst health crisis as it announced a series of measures to shore up medical infrastructure and supplies and scale up vaccination.
'There will be increases.' 'There is bound to be, but you have to bear with all this.' 'The focus should be to provide optimum care for those who are in the need.' 'We should focus more on care, better care. Not on testing.'
'We really need to look seriously to see if there are any local variants.'
'The immune protection may well wane somewhat, and that's what we have to monitor.' 'Should it wane to the point where vaccinated individuals are getting severe disease, then we really will need to give them booster shots and that'll apply regardless of what vaccine they've got the first time.'
'We are going ahead with the trials assuming what we have is the vaccine.' 'There is also a chance that what you have is not the vaccine. Then, you have to go back to the drawing board again.' 'So far, there has been no success in developing a good vaccine against coronaviruses.' 'That's why there are hundreds of trials going on at different stages in different parts of the world.'
Addressing a press briefing, health ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said currently there are no approved therapies for COVID-19 and there is not enough evidence to claim that plasma therapy can be used for treatment of the disease.
Kamil's elder sister Samina Vaziralli has taken on an expanded role
Nobel laureate Peter Doherty says his 'big worry' is there could be refusals for other vaccines if doubts over its safety turn out to be true.
As daily testing of samples of blood and throat and nose swabs crossed two lakh for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic, over 14,000 new coronavirus cases were registered in the country for the fifth day in a row to take the total count to 4,56,183, according to the Union Health Ministry data.
'It is absolutely important for us to continue to message to people that they must wear masks, keep physical distancing, as much as is practically possible, at work or at home.'
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances