Mahindra feels the vaccination drive will earn India good reputation, Biocon boss calls it a proud moment

The Covid-19 inoculation drive by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, touted as the biggest vaccination programme of the world, rolled out across India on Saturday.

The Drugs Controller General of India has approved two vaccines for the drive - Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech's 'Covaxin' developed with the help of the Indian Council of Medical Research and National Institute of Virology, and 'Covishield' developed by Oxford University and British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and manufactured by Serum Institute of India (SII) in Pune. India is also looking at four other vaccines to be rolled out in the future.

So far, the government has procured 1.1 crore Covishield and 55 lakh Covaxin vaccines at a cost of Rs 200 and Rs 206 per dose, respectively, according to reports.


Corporate India bosses are nothing but thrilled to see the campaign kick-start.

SII CEO Adar Poonawalla shared a 16-second video on Twitter, where he was seen getting the Covishield vaccine shot by one of the healthcare workers. "It brings me great pride that Covishield is part of this historic effort, and to endorse its safety and efficacy," he wrote.


Sharing an article by Bloomberg, titled 'One of the world's biggest vaccination campaigns starts in India', Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra said that he was hopeful that India will earn the reputation for planning and managing large campaigns with this drive. He said this will be one of the most important process "because it’s about saving lives".


Biotech Executive Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw called India's vaccination drive the 'proud moment in our war against Covid-19'.


Earlier this week, Kunal Bahl, founder of Snapdeal, took to the micro-blogging site to share that he had a 'good feeling' about this vaccination campaign. Lauding the country's 'excellent track record' with initiatives like Aadhar, Elections, PMJAY, PMJDY, among others, the entrepreneur-cum-investor said he was positive that India will be efficient and fast with the nationwide vaccination drive.

Over 3 lakh healthcare workers are expected to be inoculated on the first day of the much-anticipated drive, which the government believes is 'probably the beginning of the end' of Covid.

According to the government, the shots will be offered first to an estimated one crore healthcare workers, and around two crore frontline workers, and then to persons above 50 years of age, followed by persons younger than 50 years of age with associated comorbidities.

Cost of vaccination of healthcare and frontline workers will be borne by the central government.

A dedicated 24x7 call centre - 1075 - has also been set up for addressing queries related to the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine roll-out and the Co-WIN software. An online digital platform Co-WIN, developed by the health ministry, will be used to drive the vaccination programme.

While Covaxin is said to be the country's first indigenous vaccine against the novel virus, Covishield vaccine has shown an average efficacy of 70.4 per cent in a pooled analysis of interim data from late-stage trials published in The Lancet.

Covaxin uses an inactivated form of the coronavirus, and destroys the ability of the virus to multiply in the human body and increases immunity system to fight the virus. However, Covishield that is stored and transported at a refrigeration temperature of 2-8 degree Celsius is made by taking a common cold virus called an adenovirus from chimpanzees and deleting about 20 per cent of the virus's instructions. It also follows the genetic instructions programmed into it by its developers to successfully provoke a strong immune response.

The adverse events following immunisation (AEFIs) of Covaxin include injection site pain, swelling, headache, fatigue, fever, body ache, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, among others.

And, for Covishield, AEFIs are injection site tenderness, headache, fatigue, myalgia, malaise, pyrexia, chills and arthralgia, and nausea.