Weeks after testing Covid positive, Haryana minister Anil Vij discharged from hospital

Haryana Home Minister Anil Vij, who had tested positive for Covid-19 on December 5, was on Wednesday discharged from Medanta Hospital. The 67-year-old will now stay at his Ambala residence on oxygen support, he said in a tweet.

Over the past few days, Vij had been showing steady improvement. Initially, the BJP leader was admitted to the Civil Hospital at Ambala and later shifted to the PGIMS, Rohtak, before being hospitalised at Medanta. A medical bulletin by PGIMS said that Vij had “moderate Covid-19 with bilateral viral pneumonia”.

I am discharged from Medanta Hospital today. Will stay at Home on Oxygen support.

— ANIL VIJ MINISTER HARYANA (@anilvijminister) December 30, 2020

The minister had last month got one shot of the two-dose trial of the Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin after he offered to be a volunteer. The senior BJP leader had offered to be the first volunteer in the phase three trials for Covaxin, an indigenous potential vaccine being developed by Bharat Biotech.

He was administered the dose on November 20 at the Civil Hospital in Ambala Cantonment, about 50 km from Chandigarh. Before he could receive the second dose, he tested positive for Covid-19.

Covaxin has been designed to be protective two weeks after volunteers receive the second dose.

The Union health ministry had also stepped in to say that Covaxin is a two-dose anti-coronavirus vaccine and that Vij was given only the first dose a fortnight before he tested positive.

“The antibodies against the infection build up in a human being only after a specific number of days pass after the second dose of the vaccine is taken. This is a two-dose vaccine. The minister in question has taken only one dose of the vaccine,” the ministry had said in a statement.

Vij had earlier said that he had gone to Panipat a few days prior to testing positive for coronavirus where he spent two to three hours with a BJP leader, who too tested positive for COVID-19.