After two successful ‘dry run’ vaccinations, the center has decided to launch the nationwide vaccination campaign on January 16 following upcoming festivals including Lohri, Makar Sankranti, Pongal, Magh Bihu etc., government sources said on Saturday. The decision came after the prime minister chaired a high-level review meeting with the cabinet secretary, the prime minister’s chief secretary, the health minister and other senior officials to assess the status of COVID-19 in the country, along with the preparedness of the state / UTs for COVID vaccination. The Prime Minister will communicate much the same with all CMs on Monday.
The army takes a Chinese soldier into custody after crossing over to the Indian side of LAC
Vaccine rollout on January 16
Priority will be given to the health and frontline workers, estimated to be around 3 crores in number, currently registered in the government’s CO-Win app – 75 lakh beneficiaries have already been registered. Followed by those over 50 and the population groups under 50 with co-morbidities of about 27 crores will be vaccinated by July. More than 61,000 program managers, 2 lakh vaccinators and 3.7 lakh other vaccination team members have been trained to date as part of state, district and block level training. The government has yet to place an official order with the COVISHIELD manufacturer – Serum Institute of India (SII), which has stockpiled 50 million doses for India.
Vaccine run dry
With the COVID-19 count in India reaching 1.04,31,639 cases and the active count dropping to 2,24,190, the nation kept its vaccination dry in 700 districts in all states / UTs in India except Uttar Pradesh and Haryana on January 8. In the previous vaccination run, a total of 286 session sites across 125 districts were held on January 2. Both dry runs were successful and aimed at ensuring efficient planning and management of vaccine delivery in all states and territories of the Union, with Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan discusses dry run in Chennai earlier in the day.
PM Modi will chair the meeting of all CMs on January 11 to discuss the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine
DCGI nods to COVISHIELD & COVAXIN
On Sunday, Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) VG Somani announced that vaccines from Serum Institue of India (Covishield) and Bharat Biotech (Covaxin) have been authorized for limited use in an emergency. Covishield – a recombinant chimpanzee adenovirus vector vaccine – has an efficacy of 70.42%, with interim safety and immunogenicity data from Phase II / III studies filed with the SEC. 50 million doses have been stored.
Meanwhile, Covaxin – a completely inactivated Virion coronavirus vaccine – 22,500 participants was vaccinated in phase III studies and found to be safe according to the data available to date. On Thursday, Bharat Biotech (BBL) said the company had completed enrollment in phase 3 clinical trials of 25,800 participants. As informed by the ICMR, BBL has already administered 24,000 volunteers with the first injection of its vaccine and 5,000 have been administered with the second dose – with no side effects found. 20 million doses have been stored and Phase 3 trials of both vaccines are underway.
MP CM clarifies human death 10 days after COVAXIN trial, calls it a ‘fallacy’
COVAXIN Completes Enrollment of 25,800 Volunteers for Phase 3 Pre-Dry Run Studies