As the Coronavirus vaccine development reaches the advanced stages of human clinical trials, the central government has made a roadmap for distribution/ supply chain of Coronavirus vaccines in India. Today, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said that the government will be focusing to ensure that the Coronavirus vaccine reaches everyone in the country and it is the biggest priority of the government right now. “Vaccines will be distributed as per pre-decided priority and in a programmed manner,” the minister said, adding that there will be no differentiation in rich or poor. The vaccine will first go to healthcare/ frontline workers and senior citizens (above 65 years) along with people with comorbidities first.
According to him, the government will appropriately control the supply of vaccines in order to avoid any kind of divergence or blackmarketing of Coronavirus vaccines.
To ensure transparency and accountability, the Health Minister said that the details of the entire process will be shared in coming months. Earlier, the government said that it has planned to boost the eVIN Platform that will monitor the vaccine supply chain as well as the delivery system of Coronavirus vaccines as soon as they are available. The vaccine development process is being monitored by an expert group which is headed by Niti Aayog member Dr VK Paul and Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan.
The centre will do complete procurement of Coronavirus vaccines and each consignment will be tracked real-time to make sure it reaches those who need it the most. “Our rough estimate and the target would be to receive and utilise 400 to 500 million doses covering approximately 25 crore people by July 2021,” he said.
Meanwhile in India, there are three vaccines that are currently under second phase of human clinical trials. These include Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, Zydus Cadila’s ZyCov-D and Oxford’s Covishield.
