India conducted a massive nationwide mock drill on the Covid-19 vaccine administration at 286 session sites spread across 125 districts.
The exercise comes at a crucial stage as India is set to roll out the first vaccine shots to the public. An expert panel of the central drug authority has approved two Covid-19 vaccines — Serum Institute’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin — for emergency use, reported Times of India.
They are both awaiting final regulatory nod. Two more vaccine candidates are in advance stages of development.
The government said that Saturday’s dry run was conducted successfully across 125 districts in the country.
“Each district conducted the dry run at three sites or more which included a public health facility (district hospital/medical college), private health facility, and rural or urban outreach sites,” a statement released by the government said.
It said that as many as 1,14,100 vaccinators were trained during the dry run while over 75 lakh beneficiaries have been registered on the Co-WIN software till date.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has identified 300 million people to receive the first doses of the vaccines.
The priority group is made up of 30 million health care workers, policemen, soldiers and volunteers, and 270 million vulnerable people – mostly citizens above the age of 50 and 10 million others with serious comorbidities.
The producers of three leading coronavirus vaccine candidates have applied for emergency use authorization, and all of them require two doses to provide sufficient immunity. That adds up to a total of 600 million shots, and Modi’s government wants to complete the whole process by August, reported CNN.
As the country began its Covid-19 vaccine dry run from today before the roll out of a potential vaccine to the citizens, the Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan appealed to people not to pay heed to rumours about the vaccine.
He said that free coronavirus vaccines will be provided to 3 crore frontline workers in the first phase of the mega vaccination drive in India.
“In Phase I of Covid-19 vaccination, free jabs shall be provided across the nation to most prioritised beneficiaries that include 1 crore healthcare and 2 crore frontline workers,” Vardhan added.
As a global hub for vaccine manufacturing, its mass production lines can churn out coronavirus vaccines – developed either by Western pharmaceutical companies or domestically – faster and cheaper than most other countries.
When it comes to the actual vaccination process, India already has a vast, established network under its Universal Immunization Program, which inoculates about 55 million people per year.
Modi has also suggested that the country can draw from its experience of organizing the world’s largest democratic elections, adopting a whole of society approach that involves the participation of states, districts, civil society, citizens and experts.
Union minister Prakash Javadekar said India was perhaps the only country which is getting ready with four vaccines against Covid-19. The UK has given the nod to Pfizer and Astrazeneca vaccine.The US has approved the emergency use of Pfizer.
But India, as it already has three applications, is likely to get more than one vaccine for emergency use, the minister implied.
At present, six Covid-19 vaccines are undergoing clinical trials in India, including the frontrunners Covishield and Covaxin, stated Javdekar. Covishield is the Oxford vaccine developed by Astrazeneca and Pune’s Serum Institute of India. Covaxin is the indigenous one being developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Apart from these two, there are ZyCOV-D being developed by Cadila Healthcare in Ahmedabad in collaboration with the Centre’s Department of Biotechnology, and in collaboration with the Centre’s Department of Biotechnology, and NVX-CoV2373, which is being developed by Serum Institute in collaboration with Novavax.
