Phase 2 of COVID vaccination to start from March 1; inoculation at private hospitals too

In a massive development on Wednesday, the Union Cabinet approved the next phase of COVID-19 vaccination which will commence from March 1 onwards. Addressing a press conference, Union I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar stated that people above 60 years of age and those aged above 45 years having comorbidities can get vaccinated in this phase. Most importantly, the vaccination will take place at not only 10,000 government facilities but also 20,000 private hospitals for the first time.

While the government hospitals will administer the vaccine free of cost, private facilities will charge for inoculation. In the initial phase, only healthcare and frontline workers were vaccinated at government facilities.

Regarding those seeking vaccination at private facilities, Javadekar stated, "The amount they would need to pay will be decided by the health ministry within 3-4 days as they are in discussion with manufacturers and hospitals". At present, there are 1,10,30,176 novel coronavirus cases in India out of which 1,07,26,702 patients have recovered while 1,56,567 deaths have been reported. 

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COVID-19 vaccination in India

On January 3, the Drugs Controller General of India accepted the recommendations of the Subject Expert Committee of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, paving way for the approval of COVISHIELD and COVAXIN. Manufactured by the Serum Institute of India with technology transfer from Oxford University-AstraZeneca, COVISHIELD is a Recombinant Chimpanzee Adenovirus vector vaccine with its overall efficacy of 70.42 per cent. On the other hand, COVAXIN is a Whole Virion Inactivated Corona Virus Vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR and NIV.

It has been approved in "public interest" in the clinical trial mode so that there can be more options for vaccination in case of infection by mutant strains. Countering the charge that COVAXIN was approved hastily, Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan has made it clear that all the recipients of this vaccine will be tracked and monitored as if they are in clinical trial mode. On January 16, PM Modi launched the pan-India rollout of the novel coronavirus vaccination drive via video conferencing. Congratulating the citizens for their resilient fight against the pandemic, he requested them to shun conspiracy theories about the vaccines. So far, 1,07,67,000 beneficiaries have been inoculated out of which 14 lakh have been administered the second dose of the vaccine too.

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