Tami Nadu’s Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami announced Thursday that once the coronavirus vaccine is ready, it will be provided to everyone in the state free of charge. The Tami Nadu government’s decision came ahead of next year’s Assembly elections on October 7.
Tami Nadu CM’s “free Covid-19 vaccine” promise came after the BJP’s “free coronavirus vaccination for all” promise in Bihar ahead of state elections.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had released the BJP manifesto for the Bihar assembly elections today, promising the free Covid-19 vaccine once it has been approved by the ICMR.
Speaking about the Covid-19 vaccine, Sitharaman said that the country has reached a point where it is on the verge of producing three vaccines after different stages of testing.
“When we reach the stage where scientists authorize large-scale production of the vaccine, we will make it available to the people of Bihar free of charge,” added the Union Finance Minister.
The Covid vaccine may be ready by December
We all look forward to a “safe and effective” vaccine against the deadly virus. The central government expects a vaccine to be ready for sale in India from December if clinical trials are successful, according to a mint report.
Currently, three candidate vaccines are in different phases of testing in the country. Two homegrown vaccine candidates, Covaxin from Bharat Biotech and ZyCoV-D from Zydus Cadila have already started the phase II clinical trial.
The other candidate vaccine, Covishield, developed by the University of Oxford, has recently started the phase III clinical trial in India. Vaccine maker AstraZeneca signed an agreement with the Serum Institute of India to manufacture Oxford’s candidate COVID-19 vaccine for India and low-income countries.
“We hope that early next year we will have the vaccine in the country from perhaps more than one source. Our expert groups are formulating strategies to plan how to implement the distribution of the vaccine in the country,” said Health Minister Harsh Vardhan . said before.
Meanwhile, India today reported 55,838 new Covid-19 cases and 702 deaths within a 24-hour span. With this, the total infections rose to 77,06,946 while the death toll increased to 1,16,616.
Now, active cases of coronavirus in the country have remained below 10% of the total number of cases during the past three days, suggesting that only 1 in 10 cases are active coronavirus patients, the Ministry of Union Health. The daily positivity rate has also stayed at less than 5% for the past three days. “There are 7,15,812 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country, representing 9.29 percent of the total number of cases,” the data indicated. Up to 68,74,518 people have been recovered with 79,415 new discharges.
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