New Delhi:
Nearly 14 lakh beneficiaries have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in the country, including 3,47,058 in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said on Saturday.
The six days that it took India to administer more than one million doses of vaccines against Covid-19 makes it the fastest rollout of a million vaccine shots against the pandemic among countries that have placed their inoculation data in the public domain.
According to data released by the ministry, the highest number of 1,84,699 vaccinations in the country has been reported from Karnataka, followed by Andhra Pradesh (1,33,298), Odisha (1,30,007) and Uttar Pradesh (1,23,761).
Senior government functionaries on Friday told a parliamentary standing committee on health and family welfare that India has no plan to vaccinate the entire country against coronavirus as yet and that covering 50% to 60% of the country’s population should be enough to safeguard the population.
Government’s principal scientific adviser, Vijay Raghavan, and AIIMS director, Randeep Guleria, told the panel that India does not see any foreseeable possibility of a vaccine shortage.
Some members sought to know the government’s strategy to tackle side effects of vaccines and whether persons facing adverse effects will be compensated.
Raghavan is understood to have told the panel that while the government is still working out a strategy for managing such instances, there have been no cases of adverse effects so far. Sources said he also told the House panel that the government has done its due diligence before granting approval to Covishield and Covaxin vaccines.
Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that the two Covid-19 vaccines given approval for restricted use would not be available in the open market till the country’s apex drug regulator, Drug Controller General of India (DCGI), approved the data sought from their manufacturers.
“As of now, no time frame can be set for the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines in the open market. The government’s focus now is only on covering the priority population in the next seven-eight months,” said Bhushan,
He added that no market authorisation has been given to any of the emergency-approved vaccines currently in use in India and abroad. “The market authorisation comes after the stipulated follow-up on all the trial phases,” he said.
Market authorisation is a pre-requisite to sell vaccines in the open market.
As many as 1,10,031 beneficiaries were inoculated in Telangana, 74,960 in Maharashtra, 63,620 in Bihar, 62,142 in Haryana, 47,293 in Kerala and 38,278 in Madhya Pradesh, according to the data.
In a statement, the ministry said in the last 24 hours, 3,47,058 people were vaccinated in 6,241 sessions and 24,408 such sessions have been conducted across the country so far.
''As on January 23, 2021, till 8 AM, nearly 14 lakh (13,90,592) beneficiaries have received the vaccination under the countrywide COVID19 vaccination exercise,'' it said.
Delhi Health minister Satyendar Jain said the government has allowed walk-in vaccinations to improve the turnout and to ensure all health workers got protection from the viral scourge. On Tuesday, only 48.7% of the healthcare workers scheduled to get the shot turned up at the vaccination centres.
A low turnout leads to wastage of vaccine because once a vial is opened, all the 10 doses it holds must be used within a few hours. Without the required number of people to vaccinate, the leftover doses in the vials go waste.
Lajwanti, a 56-year-old nurse who worked as a health visitor for 20 years, passed away after a sudden cardiac arrest on Friday morning, six days after she had taken a Covid-19 vaccine.
The death has been noted as a case of AEFI (adverse events following vaccination) – the first in the city since the inoculations began on January 16 – even though conclusive medical evidence on whether it is linked to the vaccine or not is awaited.
Meanwhile, Bharat Biotech has successfully administered second dose of its Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin to 13,000 volunteers as part of its ongoing phase-3 clinical trials of the jab, Suchitra Ella joint managing director of Bharat Biotech said on Friday.
She said in a tweet, "13,000 volunteers have been successfully administered the 2nd dose in the phase-3 clinical trials of Covaxin. My heartfelt thanks to all of them for their pro-vaccine public health voluntarism.
Hyderabad city-based vaccine maker has successfully completed enrollment of 25,800 volunteers for the Phase-3 trials of Covaxin, Ella had earlier said.
.India's active COVID-19 caseload continued to manifest a downward movement and dropped to 1,85,662 on Saturday.
''India's present active caseload now consists of just 1.74 per cent of India's total positive cases,'' the ministry said.
It added that 28 states and Union territories in the country have less than 5,000 active coronavirus cases each and their recovery rate is above the national average.
The country's total caseload has mounted to 1,06,39,684 and the death toll due to the viral disease has climbed to 1,53,184 with 152 people succumbing to it in a span of 24 hours, the data showed