New Delhi: Asserting that the Central government is reaching out to the foreign vaccine manufacturers, chairman of India’s national task force on Covid-19 Dr VK Paul on Thursday said that talks with Pfizer are at the final stage.
“Pfizer has informed us that they have spared vaccines for India. Our talk with Pfizer is progressing well. Most probably we will get Pfizer vaccines from July,” said Dr Paul while addressing a press conference in New Delhi over the Covid-19 situation in India.
On a question over Pfizer’s demand for indemnification, Dr Paul said that the American giant has asked for the same.
“We are discussing all issues including indemnification as asked by them. We are examining the request in the interest of the people. However, no decision has been taken yet,” said Dr Paul.
Pfizer has a vaccine efficacy of 91.3 per cent against Covid-19 disease. In a recent meeting between Health ministry officials and Pfizer representatives, it was said that the Pfizer vaccine has high effectiveness against the India-dominant variant.
Pfizer has reportedly told the government that its vaccine had been proven suitable for everyone over 12, and can be stored for a month in cold storage facilities with a temperature range of 2-8 degrees Celsius.
Dr Paul said that discussion is on with Zydus, BioE, Sputnik, Zenova among others.
Referring to the vaccine availability issue, Dr Paul said that 51.6 crore doses are presently available with the government. “Our two domestic vaccine manufacturers are also ramping up. The vaccine production capacity of Bharat Biotech was 90 lakh per month initially and we believe by September-October it will go up to 10 crores per month. Similarly, the capacity of Serum Institute was 6.5 crore and it is likely to go up to 11 crores by September-October,” said Dr Paul.
Referring to the booster dose of the Covid19 vaccine, Dr Paul said that a study is going on to ascertain whether a booster is required to sustain antibodies after two-dose vaccination.
Read:| Pfizer tells Centre its vaccine suitable for 12 years and above
“People do not need to go for an antibody test after two doses of vaccination. A study is going on regarding supplementary booster dose after vaccination,” said Dr Paul.
Meanwhile, Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary in the Health Ministry said that India’s Covid positivity rate and the number of active cases are declining.
“The daily new case in India has witnessed a -3.75 per cent decrease in the last seven days. There is a continuous decrease in cases since India reported a peak on May 7. There are less than 3 lakh daily cases since May 17,” said Agarwal.
As many as 531 districts have been reporting over 100 daily cases between April 28 to May 4 which has now come down to 359 districts between May 19 to 25.
India had 37.45 lakhs active cases as of May 10 and with a consistent decline in cases, the country presently has 24.19 lakhs active cases.
Health Ministry statistics said that India registered 71,837 recoveries during the last 24 hours. As many as 25 states have recorded more recovery than reported daily cases on Thursday.
Read:| Our vaccine highly effective on COVID-19 variant prevalent in India: Pfizer to Govt
