Bharat Rakshak

Uttam

Bharat Biotech scales up Covaxin production to 700 Mn doses annually Bharat Biotech on Tuesday said it has scaled up its COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin manufacturing capacity to 700 million doses per annum. According to a press release issued by the city-based vaccine maker, manufacturing scale up has be...

Uttam

Now a poor person will obviously go for the free Modi-shot. The onus of managing the other half is entirely on states instead, whether its funding, distribution, or prioritization. Just a correction, a poor person who is 45 or above will go for the free Modi-shot. Let's see how states will manage v...

Uttam

https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/johnson-johnson-seeks-permission-for-phase-3-trial-of-its-single-shot-covid-vaccine-in-india-impost-licence/747118 Multinational pharma giant Johnson & Johnson has applied to India's drug regulator seeking permission to conduct phase-3 clinical trial o...

Uttam

For the ZyCov vaccine phase III, we should consider doing challenge trials to speed up the validation. This is the worst calamity to have struck India since at least the Bangladesh war. The UK is similarly doing challenge trials with the new so called double mutant strain that is getting prevalent ...

Uttam

Covid: In both waves, 70% of patients above 40 years, says ICMR chief More than 70 percent of Covid-19 patients over 40 years of age in both the waves and older population continues to be more vulnerable to the infection, the Centre said on Monday. Addressing media, ICMR Director General Balram Bha...

Uttam

Massive move by GoI to open up vaccination to all adults...further great to allow vaccine makers to market directly...this will allow them to make a little bit more profit and probably further incentives for more private enterprises participation in the vaccination efforts. The announcement said th...

Uttam

Lots of policy updates today:

Everyone above the age of 18 to be eligible to get vaccine from May 1, says govt

Vaccine manufacturers empowered to release up to 50% of their supply to state governments and in the open market at a pre-declared price.

Uttam

Kakkaji wrote:
Time, perhaps, to open vaccine eligibility to people 40+.

Is the taper because there is a lack of demand or is it because of a reduction in supply?

Uttam

Zydus’s Covid-19 vaccine to be for children too https://i.ibb.co/ZBKXZZD/Screen-Shot-2021-04-16-at-9-40-27-AM.png Cadila Healthcare (also known as Zydus Cadila), which plans to roll out its much-awaited ZyCoV-D vaccine in second half of May or in June, will also be administered to children if all g...

Uttam

The current production capacity of indigenously developed Covaxin vaccine will be doubled by May-June 2021 and then increased nearly 6-7 fold by July - August 2021 i.e increasing the production from 1 crore vaccine doses in April, 2021 to 6-7 crore vaccine dose/month in July – August. It is expecte...

Uttam

Mumbai's Haffkine Institute Gets Centre's Nod to Produce Covaxin

The Union government has given its permission to the city-based Haffkine Institute to manufacture Covaxin, an anti-coronavirus vaccine of Bharat Biotech, an official said on Thursday.

Uttam

Yes, this seems to be just a one-day blip, though the increase in vaccination rate for the 45-60 has been decelerating. Hopefully, vaccination will pick up next week. https://i.ibb.co/X4cSmSj/Screen-Shot-2021-04-15-at-1-30-33-PM.png I will keep updating my spreadsheet next week to see if there is an...

Uttam

Suraj wrote:I think comparing single day figures are simply too noisy, especially when it's not the same day of week. Anecdotally, Fridays numbers trend higher than Wed/Thurs numbers.

Do you think you can do an N-day average over successive complete weeks ?

Yes, I will give it a try and post it here.

Uttam

https://i.ibb.co/1s3LRf4/Screen-Shot-2021-04-15-at-12-49-38-PM.png If we just focus on the 1st dose, there is a definite slowdown in the vaccination rate. This is what we had on Friday of last week: https://i.ibb.co/30BrBVK/Screen-Shot-2021-04-15-at-12-52-48-PM.png The 1st dose for 45-60 group went...

Uttam

This is an interesting article: https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines I read a part article and found it to be garbage. In general, there is a difference between private goods and public goods. Public goods are those goods whose production/consumptio...

Uttam

On Day-4 of Tika Utsav, more than 31.39 lakh vaccine doses given till 8 pm pushes Cumulative Vaccine Coverage to more than 11.43 Cr doses

Uttam

Does look like alternatives to the adenovirus based vaccines need to be scaled up. Covaxin and the Zydus vaccine are the two that would be available over the next few months. The other vaccines are unlikely to be available until winter sets in. We are still waiting for more data on Covaxin's effica...

Uttam

Developing a vaccine, like any other drug is a very risky endeavor. The short-term and long-term effects are unknown both in terms of efficacy and side-effects. We are better off having a diversified portfolio of vaccines. We are lucky that we have two vaccines. We should have as many as possible in...

Uttam

Some more details on Sputnik V https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/russia-offers-free-transfer-of-covid-19-vaccine-tech-to-india-other-manufacturing-partners/story/436620.html The plan is to have 50 million doses of vaccines produced from India every month very soon. "Some of ...

Uttam

Interesting information in this article:
https://swarajyamag.com/news-brief/indi ... ually-rdif

He said some companies are already producing Sputnik V, but the real ramp up of production will take two to three months over the summer.

Uttam

More than 25 lakh doses administered across the Country till 8 PM today

The cumulative number of COVID19 vaccine doses administered in the country stands at 11,10,33,925 as per the 8 pm provisional report today.

Uttam

Haha yes I, glad to hear that this recommendation was immediately followed but I think it was coincidence :) Good article, Surajsan. It really points out that India is ahead of other entire continents or right at par with North America as a whole. And that is with the second largest population and ...

Uttam

A very informative article written by Suraj on Swarajya: The Covid-19 ‘Vaccine Shortage’: What Is Really Happening? Suraj: thanks for this article. I really appreciate you putting together data for production versus consumption. Looks like somebody in the govt. heard your recommendation immediately ...

Uttam

@Uttam Rs 100 fetches one a fairly decent meal almost anywhere in India. * Increase compensation for private hospitals. Rs 100 for a shot is really low. (I used to pay Rs 50 for a 15-minute consultation about 25 years ago. I am sure the prices have gone up). * Let private businesses import vaccines...

Uttam

Govt fast-tracks approval for foreign-produced COVID-19 vaccines cleared in other countries The government has decided that COVID-19 vaccines which have been developed and are being manufactured in foreign countries and which have been granted emergency approval for restricted use by authorities in...

Uttam

I see a few despondent posts here about the vaccination campaign in India. Let me state this categorically, India has done a phenomenal job. The private sector was agile to grab the opportunity to manufacture, do research, etc. the vaccine. The Govt. sector has a very systematic plan to address the ...

Uttam

Here are some very interesting details about ramping vaccine production in India: Even as Covid vaccine demand rises, firms may take some week to up production Serum Institute, with a monthly capacity to produce 60-70 million doses, will increase production to nearly 100 million next month. While it...

Uttam

Indian panel gives emergency approval for Russia's Sputnik V vaccine - sources Dr. Reddy's were the first ones to bet on Sputnik V. I hope like SII, they also started manufacturing the vaccine without waiting for approval. I couldn't find any details on DRL's production of the vaccine in the public...

Uttam

It is reasonable protocol given that all the vaccines are in EUA mode right now. Every national government still has the ultimate responsibility to its public and cannot simply respond to any later problem with ‘they trialed elsewhere, we thought it was ok’. Pfizer was asked to do trials but they d...

Uttam

J&J is about to start a clinical trial of its COVID vaccine in India. What is need for a local clinical trial? If this is to check the efficacy of the vaccine on Indian ethnicity, I am sure we can find enough data from the US and other places on ethnic Indians getting the J&J vaccine. Any va...

Uttam

[quote="Ambar"] Thanks for taking the time to gather data and sharing it with us. The fears of money supply increasing inflation are not unfounded. All else equal , the money supply would have fueled a huge amount of inflation. The keywords are "all else equal." But the world we ...

Uttam

@Amber. I hope you can share some hard data to back your arguments. I am not doubting that gold was not used as currency for a long period of human history. I am just not convinced it is an inflation hedge or that its prices capture the true inflation. I encourage you to find relevant data and share...

Uttam

Adani’s Mundra Port In Gujarat Overtakes Mumbai’s JNPT, Emerges As India’s Biggest Container Port Mundra Port, the flagship port of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (APSEZ), has overtook state-run Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in container handling with 5.65 million twenty-foot equiva...

Uttam

One more thing. When my father joined his job his salary is equal to 16 gm gold, When he retired his salary is equal to 8 grams of gold. Just think about it. Many of these arguments assume that gold prices are perfectly correlated with inflation. Why else would we want to compare our salaries with ...

Uttam

Something needs to be done for this mid-week drop in vaccination rate. Today (Wednesday) again only 13 lakhs till 8 pm. Maybe the medical staff can be requisitioned to vaccinate at employer locations during the mid-week lull!

Uttam

Suraj wrote:Shekhar Gupta was propagating senseless talk about opening up vaccinations to enable people who can afford it to pay for it. I responded:
https://twitter.com/surajbrf/status/1379677203600793605

Great job, Suraj. Thank you for countering misinformation and vested interests.

Uttam

I request members and lurkers to read these articles carefully before picking up any conspiracy theory. Here is an article in "Nature" with a lot of details: What scientists do and don’t know about the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID vaccine Unlike many of the vaccines, which are expensive and m...

Uttam

Cowin dashboard seems to be really out of sync now. Right now it is showing 8.2 crores vaccinations, way below yesterday's number of 8.31 crores. Any clues?

Uttam

Any news about how the vaccination is going on today as more people are eligible? I saw about 16 lakhs on Cowin dashboard at 6 pm.

Uttam

There are two sides to this debate. 1) Welfare of small savers, especially retirees. 2) Need to rapidly develop the industry through the private sector to provide jobs to a large population entering the economy. Here is India's population pyramid: https://i.ibb.co/J3Nr62T/Screen-Shot-2021-03-31-at-2...

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