courtesy-Corporate Compliance Insights
courtesy-The Print
Dr. Balram Bhargava, ICMR chief said today that over a Crore vaccines will be available every day by mid-July, or early-August. The centre doubled down on its stated aim of vaccinating the whole country around 108 crore people by the end of this year.
As existing manufacturers are scaling up their capacity and the new ones are finding their feet, Addressing the large population, Dr. Bhargava has asked people to maintain patience and he did not anticipate a shortage in the near future.
“There is NO shortage of vaccines. This (shortage) is what you feel if you want to vaccinate the entire country within a month but our population is four times that of the United States… by mid July or early August we’ll have enough doses for a Crore a day. By December we hope to have the whole country vaccinated”, he said.
Last week the Centre told the Kerala High Court that the country is currently producing around 8.5 crore doses per month or about 28.33 lakh per day. However, today, the Centre said that states are equipped with sufficient stock as 23 crore doses had been provided so far and around 1.57 crore doses are still available with states and UTs.
Decreased number of cases, increased testing and strict containment was attributed by Dr. Bhargava and it was highly essential “to find a way to ease lockdown – very gradually, very slowly. Re-opening revolves around three pillars: a) positivity rate of less than five percent for a week, b) at least 70 percent of vulnerable individuals (elderly and those over 45 with co-morbidities) must be vaccinated, and c) community must continue to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour”, he added.