Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to launch nationwide vaccination drive for the Covid-19 today at 10:30 am. Covid-19 had put the entire world at a screeching halt with considerable reduction in the economic growth and development.
Touted as one of the biggest inoculation drives, India sets to vaccinate its registered health care workers in the first phase. As per the data, in the first phase around 3 Crore health care workers will be vaccinated.
It is to be noted that the Government of India approved Covaxin- an indigenous vaccine developed by Hyderabad based Bhart Biotech in collaboration with Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology (NIV) and Covishield, the vaccine candidate from Pune based Serum Institute of India which is an equivalent to the vaccine candidate developed by Oxford University and Astra Zeneca for emergency use.
The UK had already given approval to vaccine candidate of Oxford-Astra Zeneca in December 30 last year. According to the data available of Bharat Biotech's website, the Covaxin had received approval for Phase 1 and 2 Human Clinical Trials and the trails commenced across India from July 2020.
After successful completion of the two trails, it got approval by DCGI for Phase 3 trials in 26,000 participants across 25 centers in India. There are experts who are of the view that emergency approval without acquiring the Phase 3 trial data is a hasty decision but health communicators and government believes otherwise.
What to expect now? Learn in digestible succinct points:
a. 3 Lakh health care workers are expected to be vaccinated on the first day.
b. PM Modi will launch the vaccination drive from around 3,000 centers across
India through video conferencing.
c. Sawai Man Singh of Jaipur will be first person to be administered the vaccine while a hospital security guard and an attendant will be administered a vaccine Madhya Pradesh.
d. Health Minister, Harsh Vardhan reviewed the preparations and reiterated that both the vaccines are safe.
e. The government has prioritized private and governmental health care workers in the first phase of the vaccination drive.
f. The government says that the vaccine will be administered to around 1 crore health care workers and around 2 crore frontline workers and then to persons above 50 years of age. Later on the vaccine will be administered to people who are younger than 50 years with co morbidities.
g. The staff of about 1.5 lakh in 700 districts has been specially trained in handling and administering the vaccine.
h. As per the data in India, Covid-19 has killed more than 1.5 lakh people and infected over 1.05 crore.