India To Start COVID-19 Vaccination Drive In January 2021
As the centre ramps up its preparedness for COVID-19 vaccination drive, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan informed that Indians may get its first COVID-19 vaccine shot in January 2021. Speaking to the news agency, the Health Minister further said, that they are giving priority to the effectiveness of the vaccines to come to the market and will not do any compromise on that. “In any week of January, we will be in a position to administer first our COVID-19 vaccine shot .” he further affirmed
“We’ve formed task forces at state, district & block levels. Thousands of master trainers have been trained across the country. We’ve conducted training at state level & trained over 20,0 00 workers in about 260 districts,” he added. “It was scientifically possible to eradicate polio. Ultimately, coronavirus will also subside & we will come across its sporadic occurrences,” he said.
He said the first one crore people to be vaccinated will be the health workers in the private and public sector, while the next two crores to be vaccinated will be frontline workers, sanitation staff, police, and other frontline workers, followed by people over the age of 50. “Over 80 per cent of the people who died due to Covid-19 have been over 50 years. There are about 26 crore people in this category. After that, people below 50 with health issues like BP, heart and kidney problems will be vaccinated,” he said.
Emphasising on India inching close to ‘atmanirbharta’ or self-reliance, he said the country’s coronavirus vaccine capabilities are at part with the rest of the world. Currently, human trials of six vaccines are underway in the country or are in different phases of development. DGCI’s subject expert committee is examining three COVID-19 vaccine candidates: Bharat Biotech’s COVAXIN, Pfizer-BioNTech and Serum Institute of India’s Covisheild for emergency use authorisation.