Yesterday, all the states took part in the exercise to check how prepared the country’s health infrastructure is to control the situation if the number of Covid patients suddenly increases. Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya himself was present at Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital. Meanwhile, Bharat Biotech said its nasal vaccine ‘Incovacc’ will be available from the fourth week of January. The vaccine, which costs Rs 800 inclusive of five per cent GST, will be available for around Rs 840 in private hospitals.
However, the intra-nasal vaccine will be available for only 325 rupees in central and state government hospitals or vaccination centers. Krishna Ella, chairman of Bharat Biotech, said, “That vaccine can be used as a booster dose.”
Comment from the Health Minister
The Narendra Modi government is reeling as the new Omicron subspecies BA5.2.1.7 begins to spread rapidly in China. The Union Health Ministry has said how prepared the health infrastructure of big cities as well as districts are to deal with Corona, how many beds are there for Covid patients, whether oxygen plants are functional, whether the hospitals have sufficient number of oxygen cylinders, drugs for Covid and above all, whether there are trained medical staff to deal with Corona. All of them have been checked on this day. The Union Health Minister said, “Yesterday’s exercise was organized to check if the hospitals are infrastructural ready to face the pressure in case of a sudden increase in infections. The respective state health ministers were responsible for seeing that the hospitals in the state were practicing according to the protocol.”
On this day, the District Magistrate of Madurai in Tamil Nadu said that a six-year-old girl and her mother who came to Madurai from China via Sri Lanka are known to be Covid positive. Further testing of their samples is underway.
Mandaviya sat in a meeting with the doctors of the Indian Medical Association on the 26th. In the meeting, a section of doctors demanded that the government should give a green signal for the second booster dose or the fourth vaccination. But only 27% of people across the country have taken the third dose of Corona Booster! As a result, the government wants to emphasize the campaign so that the countrymen take the third dose quickly.
Wrapping up
However, since the outbreak of corona infection in the country, there has been a new momentum in vaccination. According to Co-Win portal, in the week of December 11-17, an average of 45-57 thousand vaccinations were done in the country (on December 17 only 6500 vaccinations were done). But in the week of December 18-24, the daily vaccination average has increased to around 75,000. Between them, more than one lakh vaccinations were administered on December 23 and 24, with booster doses of 77, 992 and 82,433 respectively. In total, around 22 crore people are on booster dose in this country so far. The Health Ministry is hopeful that boosters will accelerate once Bharat Biotech’s intra-nasal vaccine enters the market.