COVID-19 vaccine pricing to procurement policy: Union Health Minister clarifies all aspects of vaccination phase 3

Explaining the Government of India’s new, liberalised vaccine procurement policy, Dr Harsh Vardhan wrote: “The government has announced a ‘Liberalised and Accelerated Phase 3 Strategy of COVID-19 Vaccination from May 1’, which makes anyone above 18 years eligible for taking the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Moneycontrol News

April 25, 2021 / 19:55 IST

Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister of Health. (File image)

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan took to Twitter on April 25 to clarify all aspects of India’s COVID-19 vaccination drive and called for greater degree of “shared idealism” as the country battles the second wave of the pandemic.

Explaining the Government of India’s new, liberalised vaccine procurement policy, Dr Harsh Vardhan wrote: “The government has announced a ‘Liberalised and Accelerated Phase 3 Strategy of COVID-19 Vaccination from May 1’, which makes anyone above 18 years eligible for taking the COVID-19 vaccine.”

“In any battle, time is of the greatest essence. While the dreaded disease is spreading like a tsunami, it was critical to ease the controls and allow a free hand to the state governments as well as the private sector. Hence, under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we decided to ease the vaccination policy norms,” he added.

The Union Health Minister then went to complain about the misinformation that is being spread about the third phase of India’s coronavirus vaccination drive and offered the following clarifications.

He said that the over 14 crore vaccine doses that have been administered by the states so far along with an additional stock of one crore vaccines were all provided by the Centre to the states for free.

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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