The Union Health Ministry on Tuesday said that mixing of Covid-19 vaccines is not part of the protocol yet.
"Same vaccines (Covishield and Covaxin) have to be administered for both doses. Stick to the SOP," it clarified.
Dr N K Arora, chairman of Covid-19 working group under National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI), had yesterday told news agency ANI that India may soon start testing the feasibility of mixing two different doses of Covid-19 vaccines to see if it helps in boosting one's immune response to coronavirus.
The government asserted that India will have enough Covid-19 vaccine doses to inoculate up to one crore people per day by mid-July or early August.
Noting that the ferocious second wave is on the verge of abating, the government said that ramping up of testing as well as containment at the district level "has worked" in bringing down the cases.
At the same time, it cautioned that while the easing of lockdown is imperative, it has to be done very slowly. “Whatever we know from possible scenarios presented by eminent people, it (Covid-19) will decline and June will be much much better but the concerns are when we open up how do we behave because the virus has not gone anywhere,” NITI Aayog member (Health) V K Paul said.
Addressing a press conference, ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava said India's vaccination is being ramped up and "by December we hope to have the whole country vaccinated".
He mentioned that India is one of the five countries which are producing vaccines and asserted that "there is no shortage of vaccines".
"Shortage is what you feel if you want to vaccinate the country within a month. The total number of vaccinations done in the country is nearly equivalent to the total number done in the United States and our population is four times the population of the USA. We have to have some patience.
(With inputs from PTI)