The government on June 8 said it has placed an order for 44 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses. This includes 25 Crore Covishield from Serum Institute of India and 19 Crore doses of Covaxin from Bharat Biotech, the government said.
This comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the nation announced a revised vaccination policy in which all citizens aged above 18 would be vaccinated at free of cost by the Centre. All state-level vaccine procurement would also be taken over by the central government, the Prime Minister said in his televised address on June 7.
Dr VK Paul, member NITI Aayog said during the Health Ministry press conference on June 8 that the government has also placed an order to purchase 30 crore doses of Biological E's vaccine, which will be available by September.
“This is in immediate follow-up of the Prime Minister's announcement of these changes in the Guidelines of National COVID Vaccination program yesterday,” the Health Ministry said adding that these 44 crore (25+19 cr) doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be available till December 2021 and will be delivered August onwards.
Additionally, 30% of the advance for procurement of both the COVID-19 Vaccines has been released to Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech, officials said.
Dr Paul said that as of now, the country has 53.6 Crore COVID-19 doses to be administered until July end. “We do not see any shortage August-September onwards. We are speeding up the vaccination,” he said.
India has, so far, administered 23.62 crore vaccine doses, according to the government figures.
On June 8, a day after PM Modi's address to the nation, the government issued the Revised Vaccination Guidelines. The new guidelines came in the wake of several states urging the Centre to step in after they failed to purchase vaccine through global tenders and days after the Supreme Court asked the government to adopt a policy in accordance to the “dynamic pandemic situation”.
The Centre, however, has asserted that it had started working on the revised vaccination guidelines well before last week's SC order
The Health Ministry said that there has been a 33 percent decline in the number of cases in last one week and 65 percent reduction in active cases. State-wise, the Ministry said, there are 15 states with less than 5 percent test positivity rate.
Besides, the Health Ministry also said that the overall recovery rate of COVID-19 stood at 94.3 percent. “As many as 1,82,000 recoveries and 4.62% test positivity rate were reported in last 24 hours. Weekly positivity rate in 15 states is less than 5%,” said Lav Agrawal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry.
Follow our Live Blog for Coronavirus News Updates