COVID-19 cases: Vaccines will be administered in 10,000 government and 20,000 private centers. (Archive)
New Delhi:
The second phase of the coronavirus vaccination campaign will begin on March 1, with priority given to people over 60 and those over 45 with comorbidities, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said Wednesday afternoon. , and added that the details of what was counted as comorbidity will be published by the Ministry of Health.
The vaccines will be administered in 10,000 government-run centers (where it will be free) and 20,000 private centers. Vaccination charges at private centers will be confirmed in a few days.
“Starting March 1, people over 60 and those over 45 with comorbidities will be vaccinated in 10,000 government vaccination centers and more than 20,000 private ones. The vaccine will be administered free of charge in government centers,” he said Javadekar.
“Those who want to be vaccinated in private hospitals will have to pay. The amount they would have to pay will be decided by the Health Ministry within three or four days, as they are in discussion with the manufacturers and the hospitals,” he added.
It is expected to cover around 27 million people in the second phase. Of this group, about 10 million rupees are people over the age of 60, the government said.
Last month, sources said Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be vaccinated in the second phase, as would all senior ministers, parliamentarians and members of the judiciary above 50.
ICMR advisor Dr. Suneela Garg told NDTV yesterday that as the vaccination campaign expands to include the larger population, there will be segregation based on various criteria and that each subgroup will have separate time frames.
Dr Garg, who is also on the Lancet Commission’s Covid-19 India Working Group, said that those with comorbidities such as “diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, chronic respiratory disease” will be prioritized above people with other diseases.
He also said that the private sector will play an important role in the campaign.
In the first phase, which began on January 16, the center focused on vaccinating around three million people from healthcare workers and front-line workers. However, as of this morning only about 1.21 million people have been vaccinated. Of these, around 14 lakh have received the mandatory second shot.
India has so far approved two vaccines for emergency use: Covishield (developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and manufactured by the Serum Institute) and Covaxin from Bharat Biotech.
A third party, Russia’s Sputnik V, has also been requested for emergency use and this will be considered by the SEC (committee of subject matter experts) today. Sputnik V has a 91.6 percent efficiency rate, which is higher than Covishield’s 70 percent. The efficacy of covaxin has not yet been confirmed.
There are 1.47 lakh of active Covid cases in India as of this morning, with 13,742 new cases reported in the last 24 hours. Maharashtra and Kerala are the worst hit, with more than 50,000 active cases in each.
The center has dispatched high-level teams to 10 states that have seen an increase in cases, warning that relaxing the rules will exacerbate the crisis given the emergence of new strains of the virus.
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