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Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, on Friday, said that the government is in talks with US pharmaceutical company Pfizer for its vaccines to be made available in India. Answering a question in Lok Sabha, Mandaviya also said Moderna has taken permission to provide its vaccines in India.
He also informed that Johnson & Johnson has tied up with Biological E and that work on technology transfer has begun.
“The Indian government was holding talks with Pfizer, and the company had said that it will not deal with the States. So, the Indian government is holding talks with the company. Even today, an expert group is in constant touch with the company,” said Mandaviya, and added that the country will boost its vaccine manufacturing.
New vaccine regime
Mandaviya said that many States wanted to directly procure vaccine doses and the Centre had given permission to them, but when they floated tenders they did not get any response. Hence, the new vaccine regime was introduced, under which the government is procuring 75 per cent of the vaccines for States and 25 per cent is reserved for private hospitals.
India’s daily cases dropped to 35,342 on Friday with 483 deaths in the last 24 hours till 8:00 am, as per the Health Ministry data.
Kerala led in terms of recording the highest daily cases at 12,818 with 122 casualties, followed by Maharashtra at 7,302 with 120 deaths.
Active cases in north-east
It is to be noted that a continuous spike in active cases is being noticed in the north-eastern States, including Sikkim, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also raised his concern over the increased positivity rate in this region.
Recovery rate
Meanwhile, 38,740 recoveries were registered in the last 24 hours, and with this the recovery rate stood at 97.36 per cent. Also, the weekly positivity rate remained below 5 per cent, currently at 2.14 per cent, and the daily positivity rate stood at 2.12 per cent, less than 3 per cent for 32 consecutive days. In addition, India conducted 16,68,561 tests on Thursday, with 45.29 crore tests done so far.
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