New Delhi: At a time when Omicron variant has raised a major concern across India, a Parliamentary committee has asked the Central government to chalk out a definite time schedule for vaccination for the whole or majority of the population in the country.
"Vaccination in a definite time frame is necessary to create a strong herd immunity against Covid19 at the earliest particularly in the wake of spreading of highly infectious UK and South African variants of the virus," the Parliamentary committee on chemicals and fertilizer chaired by Lok Sabha MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi said in its 30th report presented in the Parliament.
It said that government should take all steps necessary for the large scale manufacturing of Covid19 vaccines in the country for meeting the vaccine requirement of the country as per the time schedule. "Particular attention should be given for the implementation of Covid suraksha, the Indian Covid19 vaccine development mission in letter and spirit for accelerating the research and development of safe and efficacious vaccines so as to meet the vaccine needs of the country in a time bound manner," the committee said.
It also said that steps should also be taken for getting country's share of vaccines from WHO's COVAX facility which aims to get 2 billion doses of Covid vaccine by the end of 2021 and has assured the participating countries to deliver vaccines doses to cover up to 20 percent of their countries population.
The committee in its report said that current production capacity of the vaccine manufacturers in the country is nearly 60.84 crore doses per annum which includes 40 to 50 crore doses per annum of Covishield vaccine, 10 crore doses per annum of Covaxin and 84 lakh doses per annum of ZyCoV-D vaccine by Ahmadabad based Cadila Healthcare Limited which is still under phase III human clinical trials. "With the present production capacity in the country, it may take more than four years to meet the requirements of vaccinating whole or majority of the population in the country as every person has to be give two doses," said the committee in its report.
Emphasising on India's overall population of 138.7 crore, the committee said that there is an urgent need to ramp up the manufacturing capacity of Covid19 vaccine for successful implementation programme of vaccination in the country. In its reply, officials from the department of pharmaceuticals admitted that in view of the dynamic nature of the pandemic and evolving status of availability and type of Covid19 vaccines, a definite time frame can not be indicated for completion of vaccines.
It may be mentioned here that Union Health Ministry has initiated a move called "Har Ghar Dastak" to inoculate each and every citizen. Meanwhile, keeping in mind about the Omicron variant of Covid19, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Saturday sent letters to Kerala, J&K, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Odisha and Mizoram government asking them to undertake enhanced surveillance of international travellers, continued monitoring of emerging hotspots, prompt and comprehensive contact tracing of positive individuals and follow up for 14 days.
"All positive samples should be sent for genomic sequencing quickly to INSACOG labs, early identification of cases through adequate testing, review of health infrastructure preparedness and most importantly to focus on IEC and community sensitization," the health secretary said. As per health ministry statistics, India has administered 1,27,53,68,513 vaccine doses till date with the administration of 80,02,38,581 1st dose and 47,51,29,932 second dose.
Read: Omicron in India: First case of Omicron detected in Gujarat and Maharashtra
