The vaccination drive against the novel coronavirus disease will kick-start from January in India, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has assured. The minister has also expressed confidence in the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, saying centre has closely monitored the vaccine candidates. Notably, India is yet to approve a covid-19 vaccine.
The Union Minister said, “Our first priority has been safety and effectiveness of vaccines. We don’t want to compromise on that. I personally feel, maybe in any week of January, we can be in a position to give first COVID vaccine shot to people of India.”
He added, “We’ve formed task forces at state, district and block levels. Thousands of master trainers have been trained across the country. We’ve conducted training at state level and trained over 20,000 workers in about 260 districts”.
The minister further added that as many as 30 crore people including health care workers, front line workers, vulnerable group, police officers on COVID duty, military and sanitation staff will administer the covid-19 vaccine in the first phase.
The Subject Expert Committee (SEC) of the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) is currently evaluating the applications of three COVID-19 vaccine candidates — Serum Institute of India manufactured AstraZeneca’s Covishield , Bharat Biotech’s COVAXIN and Pfizer-BioNTech’s for emergency use approvals.
Currently, as many as eight vaccine candidates are undergoing different stage trials across the country. including three indigenous vaccines, which could be ready for emergency use authorisation in the country in near future.