India Coronavirus Dispatch: Centre looks to finetune vaccine strategy

Ramdev now says Covid vaccine has no use, SpiceJet scion calls on the government to open up vaccines to the private sector, and more-news relevant to India's against the pandemic

Over 152,000 fresh cases reported

India reported 152,734 fresh coronavirus infections on Monday, taking the cumulative caseload to 28 million, according to central health ministry data. The country saw 3,128 deaths due to the pandemic, taking the death toll to 329,100. The active caseload is at 2 million, while the total recoveries have surged to 25.7 million. As many as 213 million shots have been administered since the nationwide inoculation programme kicked off on January 16. Of these, 1 million were given on Sunday. Read more

Centre looks to fine-tune vaccine strategy

The central government plans to examine the impact of its move to extend the interval between the first and the second shots of Covishield once it collects data from a newly proposed Covid vaccine tracker platform that will be launched shortly, a report in The Indian Express said citing sources. The data may also help the government decide whether to approve a single-dose regimen for Covishield, the report said. Read here

Ramdev now says Covid vaccine has no use

Yoga practitioner and proponent Ramdev has once again questioned the legitimacy of Covid vaccines amid an ongoing tussle with the Indian Medical Association, a report in the Hindustan Times said. Ramdev claimed he hasn’t taken a jab as he enjoyed the protections offered by yoga and Ayurveda. He also claimed that the fatalities being caused by the pandemic showed that modern medicine was not 100% effective. “For decades, I have been practising yoga and Ayurveda, so I didn’t feel the need to get vaccinated. Over 100 crore people of India as well as in foreign countries have access to these ancient therapies. In the times to come, Ayurveda will be globally accepted,” Ramdev said. Read more

Open up vaccines to the private sector: SpiceJet scion Avani Singh

Avani Singh, the CEO of SpiceHealth and daughter of SpiceJet Ltd. Chairman Ajay Singh, has urged the central government to allow the private sector to produce and procure Covid vaccines, saying it is the only way to ensure India's large population gets adequate protection, a report in ThePrint said. “The government needs to become much more lenient in opening up vaccination to the private sector,” Singh said in an interview. “We are obviously moving at a much slower pace with vaccinations than we should be. If they let private players like labs and hospitals procure vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and let private players make Covaxin more aggressively we could significantly ramp up the administration and build up enough immunity to get out of this faster.” Read more

T-cells help blood cancer patients fight Covid

Researchers have found that blood cancer patients with Covid who had higher CD8 T cells were more than three times likelier to survive than patients with fewer CD8 T cells, a report in The Indian Express said. The findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Medicine. Read more