NEW DELHI, May 29: Even as the daily new cases dipped to 45 days low at 1.73 lakh in the last 24 hours on Saturday morning, the chief of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Randeep Guleria, a member of the government Covid panel, said India hoped to vaccinate one crore people daily by the end of July.
“India will have to increase the production of COVID-19 vaccines in a big way if it hopes to achieve its coverage targets, Dr Guleria, has said. It must also complement this with a comprehensive strategy for procurement of doses from abroad, he said.
“India hopes to vaccinate one crore people daily by the end of July. India needs to ramp up production and get as many vaccines as it can from abroad,” he said. He emphasised the need for a ‘holistic solution’ to vaccine procurement, citing the manufacturers’ preference for dealing with a single authority instead of multiple ones.
The AIIMS chief’s comments come in the context of several global drug makers refusing to meet demands of various state governments like those of Delhi and Punjab. They have cited their policy of negotiating with only the central government of India.
This need for state governments to seek private players’ help arose following the Centre’s Covid vaccine policy introduced recently, under which companies were allowed to fix their own supply contracts with private hospitals and regional authorities.
Referring to the need to focus the vaccination drive on pregnant women, Dr Guleria said, “Pregnant women have a high morbidity and mortality, so we should vaccinate them quickly.” He said, going by global data, the benefits of vaccines far outweigh their negative effects as far as this segment is concerned.
“Covaxin is an inactivated virus vaccine which is similar to the flu vaccine, thus it should be safe for pregnant women,” he said.
Making an important clarification on the use of immunity boosters like multivitamins and zinc supplements, the AIIMS chief said they do not do any harm, yet they should not be taken for extended periods. Instead, he advised people to eat healthy and get these dietary constituents from natural sources.
India, meanwhile, showed a decline in daily cases and reported 173,790 new Covid-19 cases and 3,617 deaths in the last 24 hours ending 8 am on Saturday. With 2,84,601 patients recovered during the last 24 hours, a total of 2,51,78,011 recoveries reported across the country so far. Also, the active caseload further declined to 22,28,724 with a drop of more than a lakh in the last 24 hours, as per the Union Health Ministry. The number of new Covid-19 cases detected on Friday is the lowest since April 12. Maharashtra reported 1,022 new deaths while Tamil Nadu had 486. Tamil Nadu recorded over 31,000 new cases while Karnataka had close to 23,000.
With today’s data, the recovery rate has increased to 90.80 per cent. Also, the weekly positivity rate is currently at 9.84%, daily at 8.36%, less than 10% for 5 consecutive days.
The Union Health Ministry Saturday said over 27.7 crore vaccine doses have been provided to states and union territories. Out of which, the total consumption, including wastages is 20,80,09,397 doses, it said. “Over 1.82 crore Covid vaccine doses are still available with the states/union territories. Over 4 lakh doses are in the pipeline and will be received by the states/UTs within the next 3 days,” the ministry said.
The Health Ministry said the government’s approach in vaccine distribution had ensured that, “90% 1st dose coverage amongst registered Health Care Workers has been achieved and around 84% coverage of 1st dose amongst registered Front Line Workers has been done so far.”
(Manas Dasgupta)