Who will get the Covid-19 vaccine first in India? Health Ministry prepares plan

There are three vaccine candidates in various stages of clinical trials and those who need it most will get it first irrespective of affordability

A vaccine against Covid-19 will be first made accessible to those who need it most regardless of the fact that if they can afford it or not, the committee created to decide who gets the vaccine first, an ANI report said.

The Union Ministry for Health and Family Welfare is hoping to distribute about 400 to 500 million in the country by the middle of next year.

On Tuesday, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan met a group of ministers to talk about strategies that need to be adopted to distribute Covid-19 vaccines when it gets released, the report said.

"The task of identifying frontline workers, recalibration of digital platform, logistics of non-vaccine supplies, cold chain augmentation are being carried out as per the detailed implementation plan,” said Dr VK Paul, who heads the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration.

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The committee, National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration, which is drawing up the list of potential first candidates for the vaccine consists of Dr VK Paul, AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria, representatives of the ministries of external affairs, biotechnology, information technology, Director General of Health Services, National Aids Research Institute, Indian Council of Medical Research and representatives from states.

Dr Paul said that they have conducted a comprehensive study on which sections of the population to prioritise that would initially get access to the vaccine. The committee has drawn inspirations from US’s Centre for Disease Control and WHO.

The health ministry also said that the eVIN network which can track the latest vaccine stock position, temperature at storage facility, and geo-tag health centres is being repurposed for the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines.

Currently, there are three vaccines that are going through the process of clinical trials in India. They include Bharat Biotech International Limited and ICMR’s Covaxin which is also India’s first indigenous vaccine candidate. At present, it is in Phase II of clinical trials.

ZyCoV-D by Zydus Cadila is also in the second phase of the clinical trial.

The last and the frontrunner is AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine which is developed by the University of Oxford, manufactured by Serum Institute of India.