State govts urged to take national approach towards deciding criteria for COVID vaccine: Centre

 State governments have been urged to take a national approach towards engaging with companies and deciding criteria for COVID-19 vaccination, Centre said on Tuesday, asserting that in order to deliver vaccine to priority groups, re is problem in terms of resources.

Responding to a question over BJP's election manifesto promising free coronavirus vaccine for everyone in Bihar, Dr V K Paul, NITI Aayog member (Health), who also heads National Task Force on COVID-19, at a press briefing said that resources will t be an issue in ensuring access to vaccines as and when it becomes available.

Overall we can say with responsibility that resources will t be an issue in ensuring access to vaccines. We have requested state governments to wait for overall picture to become clear and to take a national approach towards engaging companies and deciding criteria for vaccination. state governments have made se statements and y should be respected,Paul said.

access to vaccine will be in such a way that if vaccine supply is t unlimited, prioritisation has to be done and prioritisation principles will be determined based on availability of vaccine and those principles are being discussed, he said.

From efforts and discussions in National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration of Union government, Paul said vaccine scenario is dynamic and approach is being fine-tuned and blueprints and preparations are being made and "in order to deliver vaccine to priority groups, to extent that we can foresee, re is absolutely problem in terms of resources".    Giving an update on three COVID-19 vaccine candidates which are  presently in different sts of clinical trials in India,

ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava said Bharat Biotech's Covaxin has got approval for phase III trials and will start trials soon while Cadila is also progressing with phase-II trials .

Serum Institute of India is in process of completing phase 2B and 3 trials but y also have phase 3 trials ongoing in Brazil, South Africa and US,  Indian Council of Medical Research DG said.

Besides, re are four or five more candidates which are in pre-clinical evaluation and y will be rolled out in phase I and II as and when y are ready, he said.

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said a subgroup in national expert committee is looking at requirements of cold chain. Presently, facilities of cold chain in over 28,000 locations are being used under Universal Immunisation Programme and work is going on how y can be enhanced and ir capacity can be augmented.

In response to a question on wher children would be enrolled as volunteers for vaccine trials, Paul said re is a general dictum for trials of vaccines and drugs as per which ir safety and efficacy is established in adult before ir being tried on children (unless vaccines are for children only), pregnant women or old people. 

(IM CREDITS:PTI)