Covid-19 vaccine updates: Punjab CM to take first shot of vaccine in state

Even though Covid-19 cases continue to dip across the country, Centre is busy in drawing a roadmap to ensure last mile vaccine delivery to every citizen of the nation.

The prime minister held a meeting with Gennova Biopharma, Biological E and Dr. Reddy’s on Monday. These three pharmaceutical companies are involved in developing an indigenous Covid-19 vaccine. PM Narendra Modi had also visited Zydus Cadila’s manufacturing facility near Ahmedabad, Bharat Biotech’s vaccine manufacturing facility at Genome valley at Hyderabad and Serum Institute of India (SII) campus at Pune on Saturday to review India’s preparedness.

Here are the latest updates on India’s Covid-19 vaccine development plans and its rollout -

• Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh will take the first shot of the Covid-19 vaccine in Punjab, ANI reported. Singh made this announcement on Wednesday when he was holding a virtual cabinet meeting. He will become the second lawmaker after Haryana minister Anil Vij who was administered a trial dose of Bharat Biotech’s vaccine in November.

• ICMR-NICED on Wednesday started the phase III regulatory trials of Bharat Biotech’s coronavirus vaccine candidate Covaxin in Kolkata. Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, who inaugurated the beginning of the Phase III trials, expressed hope that the trials will be conducted smoothly. The trial will involve 26,000 volunteers from all over the nation.

• The health ministry on Tuesday said that the ministry never said that it is not planning to inoculate every single person in the country. Health secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Tuesday said that there were no discussions on vaccinating the entire country.

• ICMR director Balram Bhargava said that the Covid-19 vaccine drive will primarily aim to ‘break the chain of transmission’, as reported by news agency PTI. He said, “Our purpose is to break the chain of virus transmission. If we are able to vaccinate a critical mass of people and break the chain of transmission, then we may not have to vaccinate the entire population.”

• Cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba met health secretaries, chief secretaries and other senior officials of the states and union territories to discuss the rollout of vaccines when available. He has also asked officials to develop a database of groups of people who will be prioritised for inoculation once the vaccine is made available. Government is planning to inoculate an estimated amount of 1 crore frontline health workers with the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.