PM Modi holds meeting on Covid vaccine strategy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a virtual meeting with top officials, including those from the Centre’s think-tank NITI Aayog to discuss India’s strategy for developing a Covid-19 vaccine and making it accessible to the masses.

“Held a meeting to review India’s vaccination strategy and the way forward. Important issues related to progress of vaccine development, regulatory approvals and procurement were discussed,” PM Modi tweeted.”Reviewed various issues like prioritisation of population groups, reaching out to HCWs, cold-chain Infrastructure augmentation, adding vaccinators and tech platform for vaccine roll-out”.

Many pharma companies are involved in developing a vaccine to fight the virus, which has killed millions of people around the world since its outbreak in China in December last year.

Many are in advanced stages of trials and are said to be over 90% effective.

In a statement the government said, “Five vaccines are in advanced stages of development in India, out of which 4 are in phases II/III and one is in phase-I/II. Countries such as Bangladesh, Myanmar, Qatar, Bhutan, Switzerland, Bahrain, Austria and South Korea – have shown keen interest in partnering for vaccine development of Indian vaccines and use thereof”.