In an attempt to give a massive push to its immunisation campaign that is currently facing acute vaccine shortages, India is very close to granting foreign Covid-19 vaccine makers such as Pfizer protection against legal liability, Reuters quoted government sources as saying.
“Indemnity will be granted,” one of the sources told Reuters. “If one company gets it then all of them get it.”
India invited Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson in April to sell their vaccines after Covid-19 cases in the country sky-rocketed. However, no deal has been signed.
Pfizer has not sold to any country without obtaining indemnity against legal action over any adverse effects of their product.
India has not granted indemnity to any vaccine maker, but sources told Reuters, on the condition of anonymity, that the government was rethinking its position. The government has already met one of Pfizer’s other key demands by dropping a requirement that foreign vaccines undergo local trials.
Another government official said that he expected Pfizer vaccines to be delivered in August. He said initial recipients of foreign shots could be monitored, before a mass roll-out “once we are sure of its efficacy on Indians”.
The development came on the day India reported less than 1 lakh Covid cases for the third consecutive day as 94,052 new infections were recorded during a 24-hour period. The country, however, recorded the highest single-day Covid-19 fatalities with 6,148 new deaths in the last 24 hours, as Bihar revised its pandemic-related fatality numbers over the past month, after an audit. Bihar reported 3,971 Covid deaths in the last 24 hours after the audit.
A total of 6,148 deaths were reported on Wednesday, but only because Bihar added 3,951 deaths that were previously not accounted for. It wasn’t clear in what time period these deaths had happened in Bihar, but this is the first time that the state has carried out a data cleaning exercise. With this addition, Bihar’s total death count has jumped to 9,429, the 12th highest in the country.
The sudden rise in Bihar’s Covid fatality numbers, however, has had very little impact on the overall case fatality rate of the country, which moved up from 1.22 per cent to 1.23 per cent. But Bihar’s own CFR saw a jump of more than half a percentage point, from 0.76 per cent to 1.32 per cent.
“The weekly positivity rate is currently at 5.43 per cent while the daily positivity rate stands at 4.69 per cent today. It has remained less than 10 per cent for 17th consecutive days now,” the Union Health Ministry said.
India’s daily recoveries continue to outnumber the daily new cases for the 28th consecutive day as the country reported 151,367 recoveries in the last 24 hours. The national recovery rate has grown further to touch 94.77 per cent. The cumulative caseload stands at 2,91,83,121, including 2,76,55,493 recoveries, 11,67,952 active cases and 3,59,676 deaths.
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), as many as 37,21,98,253 samples were tested for Covid-19 so far. As many as 23,90,58,360 doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered across the country so far.
WITH INPUTS FROM REUTERS