From next week, the Centre will expand access to Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin to seven States in addition to the existing 12, the Health Ministry said in a briefing on Saturday. One more death — the first in a woman — following vaccination was reported in Gurugram, Haryana taking the tally to six. This too was attributed to a cardiac failure and not linked to vaccination, a Health Ministry official emphasised.
Following the immunisation (AEFI), 123 adverse events have been reported till 6 p.m. on the eighth day of the drive. So far no severe or serious adverse events or death have been linked to the administration of vaccines, the Ministry said.
Nearly 1.4 lakh were vaccinated until 6 p.m. with Maharashtra polling nearly 21,751 inoculations followed by Bihar at 12,165 and Andhra Pradesh at 11,562. This brings the number in the first week since the vaccination drive began to 15,37,190 healthcare workers. Across India, 27,776 sessions have been organised since last Saturday and ideally there should have been 2.7 million vaccinations so far. Accounting for today’s numbers, this works out to nearly 55% of the intended beneficiaries getting their inoculations.
Eleven persons have been hospitalised so far.
A training of Immunization Programme Managers of 13 countries (Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brazil, Maldives, Mauritius, Mongolia, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Seychelles & Sri Lanka) using Indian vaccines was conducted by the Ministry covering all aspects of the roll-out spread over two days.
The seven States administering Covaxin from next week would be Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab & West Bengal.
