New Delhi: Wastage of COVID-19 vaccines across all states and union territories has decreased drastically, the Union Health Ministry said on Saturday.
Statistics from the health ministry suggested that the wastage of Covaxin has decreased from 17 percent on March 1 to four percent on May 18. During the same period, the wastage of Covishield has decreased from 8 percent to 1 percent.
The numbers assume great significance for India’s ambitious mass vaccination campaign amid the shortage of vaccines.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his previous interactions with states and UTs had appealed to them to minimise vaccine wastage.
"This is a positive indication. All states and UTs must bring down the vaccine wastage below 1 percent," Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the health ministry, said during a press conference on COVID-19 management.
Although the statistics did not divulge state-wise data, Agarwal said all the states and UTs have been working in a positive direction.
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Regarding rumours that only those who get Covishield jabs can travel abroad and those taking Covaxin jabs will be denied international travel, Agarwal said there are no such international regulations.
"In fact, there is no consensus on the vaccine passport at the WHO level. However, the issue is still under discussion. But yes, people can travel with COVID-negative report," Agarwal said.
On being asked whether a person could take two doses of two different vaccines, Dr VK Paul, chairman of the national task force on COVID-19 vaccines, said the issue still needs scientific evidence.
"Although theoretically, it’s possible that people can take two different jabs, we need more scientific evidence to come to any conclusion because it’s an evolving situation," said Dr Paul, also a member of the Niti Aayog, said.
He refrained from commenting to Serum Institute of India's (SII’s) executive director Suresh Jadhav’s remark that the government began inoculating people from multiple age groups without taking into account the available stock of vaccines and the WHO guidelines. “It was his (Jadhav’s) personal view,” Dr Paul said.
Giving out details about the COVID-19 scenario in India, Agarwal said that the daily cases, as well as the positivity rate, are decreasing in many states.
He said that the number of states with more than 1 lakh active cases has come down to eight while there are eight states having active cases between 50,000 and 1 lakh. "The number of states with less than 50,000 cases has come down to 20," he said.
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Agarwal said that there are 18 states with less than 15 percent positivity rate and 14 states with a positivity rate between five to 15 percent.
The number of districts reporting more than 100 daily cases has also come down from 531 to 468, he said, adding the positivity rate is dipping despite increased testing.
"On May 21, as many as 20,61,683 tests were conducted and the positivity rate was 12.59 percent. Another 20,66,285 tests were conducted on Saturday against a positivity rate of 12.45 percent,” Agarwal said.
On a weekly average basis, India registered a decrease of 3.33 percent in daily new cases while the number of deaths increased from 3,874 on May 20 to 4,194 on Saturday.
