15 lakh vaccinated in Week 1; Covaxin now in 7 more states

India’s crossing the 15-lakh mark in a week after the rollout was launched on January 16 is significantly higher than numbers in the first week across other countries: the US vaccinated 5.56 lakh, 1.37 lakh were inoculated in the UK while Russia vaccinated 52,000.

As per the official data compiled by the Health Ministry on Saturday morning, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, and Telangana reported the highest cumulative vaccinations in the first week of immunisation drive.

In the first week, a total of 11 beneficiaries have been hospitalized after reporting an adverse event post immunization — 0.0007 per cent of the total vaccinations. Six deaths have been reported in the country, but the health ministry has said that “none of these deaths have been causally linked with Covid-19 vaccination”.

In the second week, the health ministry said that seven new states will also use the Bharat Biotech-ICMR vaccine — Covaxin — that is being administered in a “clinical trial mode” cleared for restricted use on the basis of only safety and immunogenicity data from phase 1 and 2 of the human clinical trials. Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and West Bengal are the new states that will administer Covaxin from next week, the health ministry said.

Currently, only 12 states were using both Covaxin and Serum Institute-manufactured Covishield. “Orientation of all Programme Managers of these 7 States was conducted today by ICMR & Health Ministry covering all aspects of implementation protocols,” said Dr Manohar Agnani, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

On Saturday, Agnani said that the Indian government also completed the two-day training of the Immunization Programme Managers of 13 countries — Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brazil, Maldives, Mauritius, Mongolia, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Seychelles and Sri Lanka — using Indian-manufactured vaccines.

The Health Ministry said that in the last 24 hours, one more death has been reported from Gurgaon, but the post mortem confirms it is not linked to the vaccination. “In the last 24 hours, one person aged 56 years who was a resident of Gurugram, Haryana has died. The Post-mortem confirms that Cardio-pulmonary disease was the reason for her death and it was not related to vaccination,” Agnani said. The health ministry also said that in the last 24 hours, one person, who was vaccinated on January 20, has been hospitalised at Government Hospital, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh.