New Delhi (NVI): The Covid-19 vaccines will be ready for rollout in 10 days from the emergency use authorization (EUA) date, based on feedback from the dry run, Union Health Ministry today said.
The announcement by the health ministry comes after India’s drugs regulator approved Oxford COVID-19 vaccine Covishield, locally manufactured by Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech’s indigenously manufactured Covaxin.
Speaking at a media briefing, Union Health Ministry secretary Rajesh Bhushan said, “Healthcare workers and frontline workers need not register themselves as their database has been populated on to the Co-WIN vaccine delivery management system in a bulk manner.”
Bhushan said Co-WIN system is made in India and for the world, and whichever country wants to use it, the Indian government will actively help.
However, while responding to a question on rollout, Bhushan said the final decision will be taken by the government.
Giving COVID-19 figures, Bhushan said the average COVID-19 recovered cases have exceeded average daily new cases for last five weeks.
“Daily positivity rate of COVID-19 is continuously declining and has been less than 3 per cent from December 23, 2020 to January 5, 2021,” he said.
Bhushan said of the total active COVID-19 cases presently, 43.96 per cent patients are in healthcare facilities, while 56.04 per cent are in home isolation.
In addition to this, Bhushan said, “India has reported only 96 new cases and 1 death per million population in the last 7 days.”
During the briefing, NITI Aayog member, Dr V K Paul, said an optimistic scenario is emerging with the pandemic situation in India consistently improving in terms of active cases and new deaths declining.
“Let’s hope this trend will continue. In terms of the new UK mutant issue, this mutation has entered this country and 71 have been isolated which shows our capacity to mount that kind of a scientific investigation. But at the same time we have not seen the emergence of any untoward cluster in the country as of now which is reassuring so far,” Paul said.
So far, 58 people have tested positive for the new strain, the Union Health ministry said this morning, reporting 20 new cases.
-CHK
