Group insurance for informal workers launched for COVID-19 coverage

The insurance policies can be customised for corporates to provide coverage from Rs 50,000 to Rs 50 lakh towards hospitalisation cover, at private as well as government hospitals.

Moneycontrol News

April 30, 2020 / 03:02 PM IST

Representative image

Composite insurance broker Edelweiss-Gallagher has enabled a pandemic group insurance product that will be available informal sector and frontline workers across industries in India.

This group level insurance solution will provide an insurance cover to food delivery agents, informal sector workers employed by companies in factories as well as frontline workers of hospitals, healthcare providers and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Edelweiss Gallagher has collaborated with four general insurance companies and assisted over 50 corporates to protect their workforce and restart their operations.

Vinay Sohani, CEO at Edelweiss-Gallagher Insurance Brokers said that the collaboration with corporates and insurance companies will help fill a critical gap and benefit companies facing cash flow problems, low demand and disruption in operations.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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