COVID-19: 'Never said entire country will be vaccinated', says Health Ministry

While addressing the daily COVID-19 briefing, the Union Health Ministry and the ICMR on Tuesday stated that the government had never spoken about vaccinating the entire country adding that if a critical segment of people were vaccinated, the chain of transmission would be broken. "I just want to make this clear that the government has never spoken about vaccinating the entire country. It's important that we discuss such scientific issues, based on factual information only," said Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan.

"Vaccination would depend on the efficacy of the vaccine & our purpose is to break the chain of COVID-19 transmission. If we're able to vaccinate critical mass of people & break virus transmission, then we may not have to vaccinate the entire population," said ICMR DG Dr Balram Bhargava.

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India's vaccine progress

Earlier in the day, Cabinet Secretary, Rajiv Gauba chaired a meeting to review the arrangements made to ensure safe, time-bound distribution of COVID-19 vaccines across the nation. From the development of ‘CO-WIN’ portal or application to manage the coordination among stakeholders to urging states and Union Territories (UTs) to maintain a database for vulnerable people, the Cabinet Secretary noted all the measures. 

Five vaccine candidates are currently undergoing trials in India, of which two are being developed by the country while three are from abroad. The ICMR has stated that India will develop vaccines not just for itself but for 60% of the developing nations. A total of 24 manufacturing units and 19 firms will be engaged in developing the Covid-19 vaccine. 

Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Zydus Biotech Park in Ahmedabad, Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad, and Serum Institute of India in Pune to review the development and manufacturing process of Coronavirus vaccines. Currently, the top vaccine candidates are - Covaxin and Covishield - both are in the Phase 3 trials.

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(With Agency Inputs)