India ready to get first shot of COVID vaccine
In News
The first batch of Covishield, corona vaccine has been dispatched from the Serum Institute of India, Pune to Delhi and 12 other cities on 11th January, 2021.
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India’s inoculation drive against corona is starting from 16th January, 2021. The first phase will include the health workers and other frontline workers such as police, civil defense personnel, sanitation workers, etc. around 30 crore people will be covered in the first drive. After them, people who are above 50 years and who are suffering from diabetes and hypertension will be in queue.
Various airlines are ready to transport the vaccines to different parts of the country. The government has arranged 1.01 crore doses of Covishield and plans to purchase a total of 5.60 crore doses by April, 2021 at Rs 200 per dose.
The Hindustan Lifecare Limited (HLL), a Central enterprise, will buy the vaccines from both Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech.
The Covishield, developed by the Oxford University and pharma major AstraZeneca and Bharat Biotech's Covaxin have received emergency use approval from the Drug Controller of India on 3rd January, 2021. Both are two-dose vaccines, which will have to be administered at a gap of 28-days.
While the Hyderabad firm also has an agreement to further develop and receive approval for Covaxin in the United States, SII has commitments to some low- and middle-income countries as well as the COVAX facility led by Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance.
SII had announced last year that it had received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to supply around 200 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the first half of 2021. This includes doses of both Covishield and another Covid-19 vaccine that it is manufacturing for US-based Novavax.
Dr Cyrus Poonawalla on Monday said SII had a huge stock of vaccines, and appealed for a simultaneous rollout for the private sector and the vulnerable group of elderly people.
“Why should the private market and vulnerable groups, mainly elderly people, be deprived until the government starts distributing in their priority areas?” Dr Poonawalla said.
