India may start vaccinating people against Covid in January: Dr Harsh Vardhan

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Sunday said that the first shot of a Covid-19 vaccine could be administered in “any week of January”. He said that the safety and effectiveness of vaccines would be the first priority and that there won’t be any compromise on that parameter.

“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,” news agency ANI quoted Vardhan as saying.

The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) is examining the applications of Bharat Biotech, Serum Institute of India (SII) and Pfizer to grant emergency use authorisation for their Covid-19 vaccines. Last week, the Centre had said that the DGCI has sought more data from these companies but it will not impact the timeline of vaccine rollout.

The National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19 (NEGVAC), headed by NITI Aayog member Dr VK Paul, has recommended that 10 million healthcare staff, 20 million frontline workers and 270 million people over the age of 50 or with co-morbidities be given the vaccines on priority once it becomes available.

Dr Harsh Vardhan on Saturday had announced that India is at the cusp of authorising the first set of Covid-19 vaccines and expressed the need for an expeditious vaccination drive to cover all the target populations estimated to be around 30 crore. He made the announcement while chairing the 22nd meeting of the high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on Covid-19 through a video-conference here as India crossed the one crore infection mark. He also expressed the need for an expeditious vaccination drive to cover all the target populations estimated to be around 30 crore.

The Minister said that India’s Covid-19 pandemic growth has dropped to 2 per cent and the case fatality rate is amongst the lowest in the world at 1.45 per cent. “India’s Recovery Rate has peaked to 95.46 per cent, while the strategy of testing 1 million samples has decreased the Cumulative Positivity Rate to 6.25 per cent,” he added.

Observing the fact that despite festivals in October and November, Vardhan said no new surge of cases was observed in this period due to comprehensive testing, tracking and treatment policy implemented on the ground.