India is just a few weeks away from licensing COVID-19 vaccine candidates, the Union Health Ministry said on Tuesday, with the Serum Institute of India, Bharat Biotech and Pfizer having already sent applications for Emergency Use Approval.
“Three vaccine candidates are under consideration of the regulator for licensing. Very active consideration is going on. There is hope that early licensure is possible in respect of all of them or any one of them,” said Dr V.K. Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog at the briefing on Tuesday. "Some of the vaccine candidates may get licensed in the next few weeks," said Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, Union Home Ministry.
“Every single Indian who needs to be vaccinated will be vaccinated”—This was the message stressed by the Health Ministry as it explained the recommendations of the National Expert Group of Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 (NEGVAC), the apex group in charging of guiding India’s vaccination strategy.
The plan is to vaccine about one crore Healthcare Workers (HCWs) in both the government and private sector, two crore Frontline Workers (FLWs)—personnel from State and Central Police departments, Armed Forces, Home Guard, Civil Defence Organisations, disaster management volunteers, and Municipal workers (excluding HCWs). The largest group of recipients will be the prioritised age group—those above the age of 50 as well as those below 50 who have associated co-morbidities—with about 27 crore people to get a vaccine.
"Vaccination cannot just be a state's or Centre's responsibility, it has to be people's participation," Bhushan said.
There are around 2.39 lakh vaccinators (Auxiliary Nurse Midwife-ANM) across the country. Only 1.54 lakh ANMs are to be used for COVID19 vaccination, with the vaccination drive to have a “minimal impact” on routine health services including routine immunisation, the ministry said.
“Once we get a green signal from our scientists, we'll launch massive production of the vaccine. We've made all the preparations and drawn an outline to ramp up production of vaccine and to make it available to each & every person in shortest possible time,” Bhushan said.
According to Bhushan, India’s current cold chain is capable of storing the number of COVID-19 vaccines required for the first three crore health workers and front line workers. The process of updating the database of healthcare workers has started across all states and union territories and central ministries, with data being uploaded on the CO-WIN software.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has interacted with all vaccine manufacturers and scietnists, with six vaccine candidates in clinical trial stage in India: The Oxford-AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine (Chimpanzee adenovirus), the Bharat Biotech Covaxin (inactivated virus), the Cadila Healthcare ZyCoV-D (DNA vaccine), the Russian Sputnik V vaccine (human adenovirus) being manufactured by Dr. Reddy’s, The Serum Institute and Novavax NVX-CoV2373 vaccine (protein sub-unit) and the Biological E Ltd, Hyderabad Recombinant Protein Antigen based vaccine in collaboration with MIT.
Bhushan noted that, as the COVID-19 situation across the world appeared to worsen, India had been performing better in its fight against the virus, showing a steady and continuous decline in new cases since mid-September. The active case lad has drastically declined with 3.83 lakh cases. The case per million count, at 7,031, is among the lowest in the world, as is the deaths per million (102), Bhushan said.
Five states—Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, West Bengal and Delhi—contribute 54 per cent of the total active cases in India, he added.
