COVID-19: 'Behave appropriately
during festive season and winter'
BY: Raman Pandit
Vardhan, who chaired the 21th meeting of the high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19 via video-conference here, said India has the highest COVID-19 recovery rate and lowest fatality rate,according to a Health Ministry statement. At the outset, Vardhan expressed deep gratitude and offered salutations to all the COVID-19 warriors who have been steadfastly fighting against the pandemic since many months, the ministry said. He informed the meeting of the sturdy public health response mounted by India in its fight against the pandemic and the encouraging results so far, it said in the statement.
With 62,27,295 recovered cases, India has the highest recovery rate of 86.78% in the world. Fatality Rate of 1.53 per cent is the lowest in the world and the doubling time has been successfully raised to 74.9 days in the last three days, he said. “A total of 1,927 labs at present have led to an upsurge in testing. India's testing capacity has been hiked to 1.5 million tests per day. Close to 11 lakh samples were tested in the last 24 hours, he was quoted as saying in the statement. “The Prime Minister has launched the countrywide Jan Andolan to encourage people to adopt and encourage COVID-appropriate behaviours to curb spread of the diseases while celebrating the festivals,” he stated.
Dr Sujeet K Singh, Director of National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), presented a detailed report on how the data-driven, graded government policies have helped India achieve significant control over the pandemic. He showed figures related to number of cases, number of deaths, their growth rate and how they compared favourably to the world due to the aforesaid policy interventions, the statement said.
While the overall recovery rate for India is 86.36 per cent, he informed that Dadar and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu have the highest recovery rate of 96.25 pc in India, followed by Andaman and Nicobar Islands (93.98 pc) and Bihar (93.89 pc). Kerala has the lowest recovery rate of 66.31 pc because of the huge surge in number of cases in the recent days, the statement said.
“Pointing out the pattern of influenza and vector-borne diseases which peak during this season, he noted with concern the less reporting of cases of Influenza due to the COVID-19 pandemic across the country,” it said.He also apprised the ministers of the advisories issued for improving the testing and surveillance activities for seasonal influenza to simultaneously detect it with COVID-19 in view of the upcoming influenza season in the country.
Reiterating Vardhan's concern on the fresh challenge to the containment efforts in view of the upcoming winters and festive season, he stressed on the gradual transition to mitigation in affected cities over the next few weeks and a sustained campaign to instil COVID appropriate behaviour among the people. Through a detailed presentation, Vinod K Paul of NITI Aayog apprised the GoM of the process of COVID-19 vaccine development in India and around the world.
He presented a comprehensive study on the priority sections of the population that would have initial access to the vaccine drawing upon recommendations of Centre for Disease Control (CDC), USA and the WHO. He also presented an age-group wise gender composition of COVID death, the percent composition of the vulnerable age-groups in the Indian population and the overlap of known COVID co-morbidities amongst these age-groups, the ministry said in the statement.
“The eVIN network which can track the latest vaccine stock position, temperature at storage facility, geo-tag Health Centres, and maintain facility level dashboard is being repurposed for the delivery of COVID Vaccine. “He apprised everyone present that the listing of healthcare workers (HCWs)would be complete by the end of October or early November while the task of identifying frontline workers, recalibration of digital platform, logistics of non-vaccine supplies, cold chain augmentation are being carried out as per the detailed implementation plan,” the statement said.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan noted the importance of keeping up aggressive testing to keep the positivity rate below 5 per cent, the countrywide mortality rate below 1 per cent and the deepening and strengthening of COVID appropriate behaviour among the general population. He also cautioned the need to observe the trajectory of the disease in key states of Kerala, Karnataka, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh which have recently exhibited a surge in cases, the statement said.
Vardhan at the GoM was joined by Dr S
Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, and Hardeep S Puri, Minister of Civil
Aviation.
India expected to have COVID vaccine from more than one source by early next year
India is expected to have a COVID-19 vaccine
from more than one source by early next year and the government is formulating
distribution strategies for the immunisation of people across the country,
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Tuesday.
“We're expecting that early next year we should have vaccine in the country from more than one source. “We are formulating strategies for planned distribution of the vaccine in the country,” he said in a tweet after chairing the 21st meeting of the high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19 through video-conference.
Vardhan had earlier said a COVID-19 vaccine
is likely to be available by the first quarter of 2021. He had also said the
Centre estimates to receive and utilise 40-50 crore doses of a COVID-19
vaccine, covering 20-25 crore people, by July next year.
On Sunday, the minister said considering the large population size of India, one vaccine or vaccine manufacturer will not be able to fulfil the requirements of vaccinating the entire country and added that the government is open to assessing the feasibility of introducing several COVID-19 vaccines in the country in accordance with their availability. Vardhan further said the country's preparedness to make a COVID-19 vaccine available to its citizens was reviewed at the GoM meet.
He added that work is going on around 200
vaccine candidates across the world, of which 151 are in pre-clinical stages
and about 40-42 are in various clinical trial stages. Nine vaccine candidates
are in an advanced clinical trial stage, of which three are in India.
Govt exploring various options on financing
COVID-19 vaccine development: Health secretary
Advanced market commitments or providing financial help to firms for conducting research and development and clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccine are options that are under active consideration, the Centre said on Tuesday while reiterating that sufficient financial resources are available to procure 400-500 million doses of vaccine as and when it becomes available.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Union
Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that a subgroup under the National Expert
Committee on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 has already mapped the
existing cold chain presently being utilised under the government's
immunisation programme and has also made a projection of the additional
requirement.
“Presently, that group is now engaged with
mapping the private sector facilities that could serve the needs of
supplementing the cold chain equipment,” Bhushan said.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had on
October 4 said that the Centre estimates to receive and utilise 40-50 crore
doses of COVID-19 vaccine covering 20-25 crore people by July next year.
Responding to a question, Bhushan said that various countries are exploring different options of extending financial support. The first option that is being explored is advanced market commitments by different countries and the second one is providing financial help to vaccine manufacturers in terms of conducting their research and development.
“This financial support may not directly come
from the government but may come from financial institutions. These are some of
the international models which are being explored.
“In India, through the department of
Biotechnology, direct financial assistance is being provided already to
designated vaccine manufacturers to assist in research and development
including presently preclinical trials and in future may get extended to
clinical trials also. The other options are also on the table and are under
active consideration of the government,” he said.
Responding to a question on the budget estimated for securing COVID-19 vaccines, Bhushan said the price of single dose or two dose vaccines that are being worked across the globe is still evolving. “We have seen in an extremely dynamic situation till the time the vaccines prove their safety and efficacy whatever figure is being bandied around is just a figure. Any indicative price for a single or double dose vaccine becomes a plausible figure once the vaccine has been able to demonstrate its safety and efficacy and once that is being done by multiple vaccines, then their prices decline drastically,” he said.
“I want to reiterate that sufficient
financial resources are available with the government to go in for this kind of
procurement,” he said.
Providing an update on ongoing clinical trials of vaccines in India, NITI Aayog member (Health) V K Paul said that phase 2 clinical trials of two indigenously developed vaccines -- one by the Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR and the other by Zydus Cadila Ltd -- are near completion and results will be available by early November. The Oxford vaccine candidate is undergoing phase 3 trial which is being conducted by the Serum Institute of India.
“Progress is good and by the end of November
we may have results. Vaccine preparedness is parallelly being done to reach
masses,” he said.
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