COVID-19 cases plateauing in India; 216 cr vaccine doses to be produced by December: Govt

COVID-19 cases in India are showing a declining trend again, the Union Health Ministry said on Wednesday. According to Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal, coronavirus recovery cases have been increasing in the country since May 3 and 187 districts have shown a continued decline in cases since the last 2 weeks.

Addressing the media, the top government official said that the overall country-wide positivity rate has declined from 21.95% to 21.02% in the past week and the number of fatalities has also reduced in the last 3 days. Twelve states have more than 1 lakh active cases while 8 states have over 50,000 cases. He stated that ten states with 25% COVID-19 positivity rate.

Vaccination drive nears 18-crore mark

The Health Ministry also informed that 17.72 crore doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in India so far. In the United States, the number stands around 26 crores. Thus, India stands in the third position, after China in vaccinating its population, said Dr VK Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog.

He also mentioned that India took only 114 days to administer 17 crore doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, the fastest country to do so. While the United States took 115 days, China took 119 days to cross the same number.

“We are happy to report that 1/3rd of 45 and above age group are protected. This age group contributes to 88% of deaths. So, you can imagine, how many dents it would have made to reduce the risk of death of this population,” said Dr VK Paul.

All vaccine doses procured by the Centre are made available to States/UTs free of cost. The doses procured by state governments directly are available entirely for vaccination within the states, said Paul.

Saying that stringent containment is the key to break the chain of the virus, Agarwal gave the example of Raipur city where the positivity rate had spiked to 54.6% earlier but after strict curbs, the cases have reduced and the positivity rate now stands at 19 per cent.

216 crore doses to be manufactured in India

The NITI Aayog official also said that Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has arrived in India and that it'll be available in the market next week. “We're hopeful that the sale of the limited supply that has come from there (Russia), will begin next week. Further supply will also follow. Its production will begin in July and it is estimated that 15.6 crore doses will be manufactured in that period,” he added.

Overall, 216 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be manufactured in India between August-December and there will be sufficient vaccines available for all, said Paul.  He also said that the government is in touch with Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J manufacturers asking them if they wanted to supply vaccines to India. “They told us they will respond accordingly to the availability in the third quarter of 2021. The talks are still on with them. We are hoping that they will supply and produce in India,” he added.

Dr Paul also said that the government is willing to invite other companies to take the formula of Covaxin for production. "Iam happy to say that Covaxin manufacturing company (Bharat Biotech) has welcomed this when we discussed it with them. Under this vaccine, live virus is inactivated & this is done only in BSL3 labs," he said.