Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the nation-wide COVID-19 vaccination drive via video conference today. Launching the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccination programme through video conferencing, the PM stressed that this type of large-scale vaccination campaign has never before been run in history. He pointed out that India is vaccinating three crore people, prioritising nurses, doctors and others on the front line, in its first phase of vaccination and that in the second phase, 30 crore people will be vaccinated.
The Prime Minister praised the scientists who had been involved in making the vaccine against the novel coronavirus for the past several months. With this, he gave the mantra of “Dawai Bhi, Kadaai Bhi” and requested people to not make the mistake of taking off the mask and not maintaining social distancing after getting the first dose.
PM Modi got emotional while talking about the hardships faced by healthcare and frontline workers during the pandemic. He said the whole world is today accepting the manner in which India has dealt with the pandemic. He said India also set the example in front of the world how Center and state governments, local bodies, government and social institutions can work better by uniting.
As per the information, the drugs regulatory body of India has currently approved two vaccines. Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) has developed the Covishield vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University while the Covaxin has been developed by Hyderabad’s Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Medical Council of research (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology.