The Center on Tuesday said multiple IDs apart from the unique digital health ID under the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) would be established for the novel coronavirus vaccination drive expected next year.
Dr Balram Bhargava, director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said that experimental convalescent plasma therapy will probably be removed from the national clinical management protocol for the disease. This thought is based on evidence that has emerged from the world’s largest clinical trial, which was conducted in India. On being asked whether the NDHM digital ID would be mandatory to receive the vaccine, the Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said to ensure that no one was left out from being vaccinated, several IDs would be used during the inoculation drive.
PM Modi on Monday, had said that the government has been planning to put in place a well-established vaccine delivery system. The digitised network and digital health ID would be used to ensure the immunisation of all.
Bhushan said, “The National Digital Health Mission as it exists today does not make digital ID mandatory to receive service under the digital ecosystem that it is creating. Therefore, to say that it would become mandatory for vaccination and those who don’t have health IDs would be deprived, is probably not the right interpretation.”
“Health ID would be utilised in those cases where the individual/recipient/beneficiary does not have (another) health ID; there are multiple other IDs which can be utilised as in the case of the present NDHM. It would be almost like the electoral scenario, where multiple IDs are prescribed (for voters) beforehand so that no one is deprived of the benefits of vaccination,” he said.
Bhushan added over 7,000 comments have been accepted by the government on data management policy on the digital health ID, and these comments could help the centre to improve the policy.
“There is a Bill pending in Parliament which addresses this issue NDHM has a data management policy, which has been in the public domain for the last one month, and we received comments which ensure both individual data privacy as well as data security. Based on the comments we would be suitably refining our policy,” he said.
Discussions are in progress on WHO’s Solidarity Trial, Dr Bhargava said. This trial has concluded that four experimental drugs including the anti-malaria drug HCQ and remdesivir do not affect hospitalised Covid-19 patients.
Dr Bhargava added, “India has done the largest trial on plasma therapy. This paper was accepted by the British Medical Journal and we have received the proof of it. It will appear very soon with more than 10 pages of hardcore science talking about plasma therapy and Covid-19. We have discussed with the national task force and we are further discussing with the joint monitoring group. This (plasma therapy) may be deleted from the national guidelines.”
“WHO’s solidarity trial, of which India has been a participant, has just put up their interim results. These have not yet been peer-reviewed. However, we find that these drugs are not performing as we expected. Debate and discussion are ongoing at the task force, and we would take into cognizance the results of these trials and issue the advisory accordingly,” he said.
The Centre said that 246 independent oxygen generation plants were being installed in hospitals in 18 states of which 67 installations are almost at the completing stage, later 150 additional plants would be installed in the second phase.
Bhushan added, “We have also started the process of importing 1 lakh MT (metric tonnes of oxygen) to ensure adequate stock to address any anticipated surge in Covid-19 cases.”
Also Read: Plasma Therapy might get removed from Covid treatment protocol: ICMR
According to the data released by the government, there has been a moderate decrease in the number of covid patients on oxygen support as compared to the peak in September. The data also mentions that oxygen production capacity in the country has also been intensified from 5,918 MT in April to 7,919 MT by the end of October.
“These are beds in ICU with oxygen support, ventilators and oxygen supported beds. On September 1, 43,022 patients were on these beds; this number steadily increased and on September 25, this number was 75,098. This number then started declining and today it stands at 57,357. The number is still high but we should not be worried because our installed capacity is very high,” added Bhushan.