The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Wednesday that the vaccination campaign that started in the country to defeat Corona could take a year or more. Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that there are five main principles in this whole process, which may take more than a year.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said in a press conference here that Zydus Cadila, Sputnik V, Biological E and Genova are other in-process vaccines that are in the advanced stages of clinical trials in India. However, vaccination in the country may take more than a year.
He said that Serum Institute of India has been ordered to 11 million vaccine doses, while Bharat Biotech has an order of 55 lakh doses. However, the general public will not be given a choice for the vaccine election.
“When Covid-19 outbreak started, non-Covid health care services were hugely affected. We do not want that to be repeated. There maybe a short delay of certain services where we might have to reschedule certain programmes but no service will be shut in future when Covid-19 vaccination drive is on. And since governments are guided by scientific norms and standard operating procedures, and therefore, transparent, we would expect that everyone would scrupulously follow these SOPs while the vaccination rolls out in the country. Also, the entire process is technology driven,” he said.
Bhushan said, “In the coming days, for some of these vaccines emergency application permission may be applied to the drug regulator”. The Phase II clinical trial was completed in December last year and has now been approved for Phase III.
Significantly, from January 16, the work of vaccination is going to start simultaneously in the whole country. Earlier, the work of delivering the vaccine has started in every district of the country. On Tuesday, the first consignment of serum vaccine has been airlifted to 13 cities of the country including Delhi. Now the vaccine will reach the vaccine store in four districts of Madhya Pradesh. From here the district store and then from there the vaccine will be delivered to the 28 focal point in Gwalior district in the next 24 hours. The vaccine will be sent from these focal points to the vaccination site.
