On Pfizer’s Covid vaccine announcement, Rahul Gandhi asks govt key questions
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said the logistics for making Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine available to Indian citizens need to be worked out adding that the central government has to define a vaccine distribution strategy.
“Even though Pfizer has created a promising vaccine, the logistics for making it available to every Indian need to be worked out. GOI has to define a vaccine distribution strategy and how it will reach every Indian,” Gandhi tweeted. The Congress leader has been vocal about the Covid-19 crisis and has criticised the Centre over testing, imposition of lockdowns, migrant exodus etc.
On being asked when India would start discussions with Pfizer, Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said Tuesday that the national expert group on coronavirus vaccine administration was in dialogue with all vaccine manufacturers - including domestic and foreign.
Pfizer, a US-based pharmaceutical company, developed a vaccine to combat coronavirus in collaboration with German firm BioNTech. The data released from the late-stage human trials of the vaccine showed that it was found to be over 90 per cent effective, Pfizer said.
Governments across the world were satisfied with the results of the trial with a hope that it might bring a halt to the Covid-19 disease which has already killed over 1.2 million people across the globe.
But, the American and German firms pointed out that the vaccine would not be available for public use any time now since the data on safety is not released and would be out in the later days of November.
Meanwhile, India on Wednesday registered 44,281 fresh Covid-19 cases and 512 more related fatalities which pushed the overall tally to 8,636,011, according to the Union health ministry’s website.
The active cases dropped below the 500,000-mark for the first time after 106 days and recoveries climbed to 8,013,783.