Bharat Rakshak

Karan M wrote:Why so few Covaxin? Shouldnt we be moving to Covaxin instead of Covishield? Production constraint at Bharat Biotech?

Yes , they’re a small company with an annual capacity of only 150 million vaccines. In normal times that’s a great number but not right now . There are ongoing efforts to expand Covaxin production to other places eg Haffkine institute.

Yes we should hurry up but it must also be remembered that Covaxin is an anomaly in that a small desi biotech co came up with a great vaccine quickly whereas many MNC giants stumbled , and others are from Russian/Chinese state entities. Let’s also give them credit for their pathbreaking success,

Suraj wrote:

Karan M wrote:Why so few Covaxin? Shouldnt we be moving to Covaxin instead of Covishield? Production constraint at Bharat Biotech?

Yes , they’re a small company with an annual capacity of only 150 million vaccines. In normal times that’s a great number but not right now . There are ongoing efforts to expand Covaxin production to other places eg Haffkine institute.

Yes we should hurry up but it must also be remembered that Covaxin is an anomaly in that a small desi biotech co came up with a great vaccine quickly whereas many MNC giants stumbled , and others are from Russian/Chinese state entities. Let’s also give them credit for their pathbreaking success,

That is completely incorrect.

First, BB is NOT a small desi biotech, they are big. They have 160 patents, operate 90+ trials in 20 countries, exported to 65+ countries and have delivered 3B+ doses of non-covid vaccine around the world including for rotavirus and hepatitis B. 3B may seem small in pandemic terms, but in non-pandemic world they did this on commercial terms. Read the details on their website

https://www.bharatbiotech.com/overview.html

Second, their goal has always been to produce Covaxin @ 700m/yr or ~60m/mo. Here is one news back from Jan 5, 2021 directly from their MD. You can find many more news stories from their MD on this.

https://www.fdanews.com/articles/200718 ... ?v=preview

Third, they were taken off clinical trial mode only few days ago, they didn't have large orders except token amounts from India/Brazil (~10m+5m total) and are ramping up only now. They haven't even published efficacy data peer reviewed yet and have to do r&d plus ramping up in parallel. It will take sometime for them to ramp up to their target.

Finally, they are not like SII who does mostly license mfg with little r&d and focus solely on production. SII is the largest producer of vaccine in the pre-covid world to start with and have orders (1B+) from COVAX/WHO, commercial sales and GoI. I am sure if GoI is willing to place 1B order to be delivered this year to BB today, they will also be able to invest and meet the same. Why would any company invest in more capacity than what it can sell in commercial terms. But GoI babus/CAG have weird notion of economic order quantity, so am not very hopeful.

Note that NS has budgeted 35k crore for vaccination. 40k crore is enough to vaccinate 130cr in 2 doses @150/dose.

Reuters report on 4 new facilities for ramping to 700m.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/indias- ... 2021-01-04

"We have four facilities coming up and we are planning (to make) around 200 million doses in Hyderabad, 500 million doses in other cities," Ella said. The company has 20 million doses available so far, he added.

The earlier post compares BB to others who have made successful Covid vaccines. Let’s take a look:

BB: 700 employees, $120 million revenues
Pfizer: 88000 employees, $48000 million revenues
J&J: 132,000 employees, $83000 million revenues

Three others - GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Sanofi - major corporate entities- all dropped Covid vaccine development due to problems at early stage trials.

BB are comparable to Moderna: 830 employees, $232 million . However Moderna received almost $1 billion in Operation Warp Speed grants and is supported by additional funding into manufacturing.

SII, a manufacturer with lower R&D overhead, has 4000 employees and $700million revenues. They manufacture the AZ vaccine under contract.

Given these figures, BB are the smallest successful Covid vaccine maker in a field where most others are orders of magnitude bigger than them.

I’m a supporter of BB. They’re the kind of company we need - able to develop capable IP under pressure. Their current capacity is 150m doses per year. I’m strongly supportive of them scaling up that production 10x if possible - their effectiveness vs price ratio is unbeatable.

Costa Rica, Paraguay request Covaxin supply

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egpeXGbHfB8

Uttam wrote:COVAXIN production expected to reach 700 million doses per year by the second half of this year.

I posted this earlier. BB is in the process of raising capacity of Covaxin production to 700 million per year.

Suraj wrote:The earlier post compares BB to others who have made successful Covid vaccines. Let’s take a look:

BB: 700 employees, $120 million revenues
Pfizer: 88000 employees, $48000 million revenues
J&J: 132,000 employees, $83000 million revenues

Three others - GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Sanofi - major corporate entities- all dropped Covid vaccine development due to problems at early stage trials.

BB are comparable to Moderna: 830 employees, $232 million . However Moderna received almost $1 billion in Operation Warp Speed grants and is supported by additional funding into manufacturing.

SII, a manufacturer with lower R&D overhead, has 4000 employees and $700million revenues. They manufacture the AZ vaccine under contract.

Given these figures, BB are the smallest successful Covid vaccine maker in a field where most others are orders of magnitude bigger than them.

I’m a supporter of BB. They’re the kind of company we need - able to develop capable IP under pressure. Their current capacity is 150m doses per year. I’m strongly supportive of them scaling up that production 10x if possible - their effectiveness vs price ratio is unbeatable.

First, Pfizer did not work on vaccine directly, much smaller BioNTech did. J&J did not work on vaccine, much smaller Janssen pharmaceuticals, Belgium, which is a subsidiary of J&J did that. But Pfizer and J&J get the glory. Similar with Astrazeneca and UOxford. Moderna was funded for covid vaccine by US Govt, hence codeveloped vaccine with NIH, BARDA, NIAID. BB is similar in that it codeveloped with ICMR, but with no direct GoI funding. GoI even put regulatory hurdles in BB path (no phase 1 trials before animal studies) slowing things down by 3 months. Compare that to UK regulator and Uoxford/AZ (simultaneous animal studies and phase 1 trials) accelerating things for them. Second you cannot compare companies with revenues in $ market to companies with revenues in Rs. market directly like that. BB/SII sell mostly in "non-developed" world, while pfizer, JJ, moderna sells in US and Europe. Point is if you are going to compare, compare BB with BioNTech, Janssen, Moderna, Uoxford and make it clear revenues are from different markets.

I am in agreement with you otherwise.

I think those are all good points. If anything Covid has helped the GoI on a crash course into how to cultivate a biotech / pharma plus drug trial system against global benchmarks . If you read the interviews with the Chinese companies they similarly talk about how they have no experience in running smooth expedited trials for a situation like this . Comparatively we’ve done really well .

Any update for Saturday numbers?

From a cost perspective both SII & BB have a block buster on their hands. Just the combination of India, poorer countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America make up for a huge market.

Neither US, Europe or Chinese have a cost effective solution. When countries have to vaccine the entire population, $20, $30 per dose is not a cheap option.

Hungary both the Chinese vaccine at $60 or $70 per dose! BB is now planning to sell to the US. If they get a good response, there will be demand in Europe as well, specially East Europe.

^^^SII/BB commercial sales are not same price as price to GoI ($2). SII indicated commercial sales will be at Rs. 1000/dose. BB sold 20 million vaccine to Brazil at $286million. Both work out to ~$14/dose. So they are not cheap either.

https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation ... 49135.html

Covishield to be sold at Rs 1000 in private markets, says SII CEO Adar Poonawalla

https://www.reuters.com/article/health- ... SL1N2KW2OK

Announcing the contract on Thursday, a ministry statement said the deal was worth 1.6 billion reais ($286 million), with the first 8 million doses expected to arrive in March.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... 589089.cms

Need to change Covaxin composition not felt yet due to vaccine's good efficacy against mutant variants, says government

NEW DELHI: The need to change the composition of Covaxin has not been felt yet in view of good efficacy of the vaccine against mutant variants, the government told Lok Sabha Friday.
There are four mutations of the Covid-19 virus in India at present -- two UK variants and one South African and Brazilian variant each, minister of state for health Ashwini Choubey said.
Providing details of the efficacy rate of Covaxin and Covishield vaccines against each of the mutations, he said there was no significant difference noted in the efficacy of Bharat Biotech's Covaxin against the UK and the Brazil strains.
However, analysis of Covaxin's efficacy against South African strain is ongoing, he said.
As for the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine Covishield, it has shown 74.6 per cent efficacy against the UK strain and has been shown to be effective against the Brazil strain.
However, its efficacy against the South Africa strain is just 10 per cent, the minister stated.
Continuous monitoring of evolution of mutations is being done by the Indian SARS- CoV-2 Genomics Surveillance Consortium (INSACOG), he said.
Besides, National Institute of Virology (NIV) is continuously engaged in virus isolation of different SARS-CoV-2 strains for further research.
Strains from South Africa and Brazil have been detected in travellers coming to India from these countries. In order to curtail spread of these variants in India the government issued revised guidelines for international arrivals on February 17.
As per the guidelines, screening of passengers coming from South Africa, Brazil and the UAE has been made very stringent to prevent spread of infection due to variants, Choubey said.
On whether the government proposes to bring about changes in the existing vaccines available in the country to check the further spread of these two mutant strains, he said Oxford-AstraZeneca have initiated tweaking of the vaccine to make it efficacious against the mutant strains particularly the South African variant.
"The need to change composition of Covaxin has not been felt yet in view of good efficacy of the vaccine against variants," he said in the written reply.

Suraj wrote:If anything Covid has helped the GoI on a crash course into how to cultivate a biotech / pharma plus drug trial system against global benchmarks .

One more important contribution I missed to note earlier was NIV, pune. They isolated the strain, gave it to BB and are involved in analysis against other strains. Without them BB could not have developed this BBV152. GoI institutions did a great job on this despite stupid political opposition.

SivaB'ji, excellent points at the same time want to nuance the following:

sivab wrote: BB is similar in that it codeveloped with ICMR, but with no direct GoI funding. GoI even put regulatory hurdles in BB path (no phase 1 trials before animal studies) slowing things down by 3 months. Compare that to UK regulator and Uoxford/AZ (simultaneous animal studies and phase 1 trials) accelerating things for them.

Imagine the hue and cry if BB's CoVaxin had been deemed "unsafe" by media pimps? GOI can never be too careful. And it shows. Just look at the EU meltdown on AZ.

Coronavirus vaccination is a multi-billion dollar market with economic and strategic spinoffs. One has to just see the strategic spinoff for India under project Maitri. We have supplied vaccines to 51 nations as of now and each and every one of them will remember this friendship. Other countries supplies tools to kill and we supply tools to save lives.

Covaxin is both safe and effective. It had to be, otherwise India's own vaccine program for its people would have faltered. And in this case, no babu or politico will ever veer off the path.

Look at the bright side. All the spare capacity that comes after coronavirus is done and dusted will lower the cost of vaccinations of existing diseases. Even the polio vaccination can move from oral to injectible. And if we can dream, I look forward to a vaccine against TB.

Suraj wrote:

Karan M wrote:Why so few Covaxin? Shouldnt we be moving to Covaxin instead of Covishield? Production constraint at Bharat Biotech?

Yes , they’re a small company with an annual capacity of only 150 million vaccines. In normal times that’s a great number but not right now . There are ongoing efforts to expand Covaxin production to other places eg Haffkine institute.

Yes we should hurry up but it must also be remembered that Covaxin is an anomaly in that a small desi biotech co came up with a great vaccine quickly whereas many MNC giants stumbled , and others are from Russian/Chinese state entities. Let’s also give them credit for their pathbreaking success,

GOI likely needs to lean on Serum Institute to shift to this Covaxin.
Covishield just flopped vs the South African variant. If we are paying so much (state sponsored vaccination), and have a desi vaccine available, we should move to that and get BB the best orders, margins possible so they become a R&D power in their own right. Especially since being an attenuated whole virus vaccine, it will likely be effective against most variants.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectious ... ta%20found.

Uttam wrote:

Uttam wrote:COVAXIN production expected to reach 700 million doses per year by the second half of this year.

I posted this earlier. BB is in the process of raising capacity of Covaxin production to 700 million per year.

70 Crores per year. We have only ordered 2 Crore Covaxin and given a 10 Crore order to Covishield. I am assuming this is due to a production ramp up within timeframe issue, but we really need to move to Covaxin.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/theprint.i ... 823/%3famp

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes ... riant/amp/

Two doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine were found to have only a 10.4% efficacy against mild-to-moderate infections caused by the B.1.351 South Africa variant, according to a phase 1b-2 clinical trial published on Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. This is a cause for grave concern as the South African variants share similar mutations to the other variants leaving those vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine potentially exposed to multiple variants. This new finding should force a rapid acceleration of second-generation vaccines and encourage further research into the possibility of a pancoronavirus vaccine.

This is bound to increase as post vaccination, everyone gets complacent, travel opens up, and hence more worldwide variants will reach India. It will be pretty lousy if the vaccine we pinned our hopes on, turned out to be suboptimal.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livemi ... 45187.html

UK, South Africa, Brazilian Covid-19 variant cases in India now at 400

There is no other option right now. The next generation of vaccines after this one will hopefully be better. Note that India did not have the routine of the yearly flu shot before covid. It's just a stroke of good luck that SII happened to have spare capacity.

This has been an excellent thread on a subject of great public importance. So many posters took enormous efforts to put in painstakingly, their insights on a dreaded disease. It is virtually impossible to name them all who contributed to making this thread so informative. As a fellow member I want to record my thanks to all of them.

Raja wrote:Any update for Saturday numbers?

According to MoHFW https://www.mohfw.gov.in/

Total Vaccination : 4,46,03,841 (25,40,449 on Saturday 20 March 2021 as reported at 8:00AM IST on 21 March 2021)

India has caught up to the US in the number of daily vaccinations of over 2.5 million/day. I think they can easily ramp this up by a million per day with existing infrastructure, personnel and procedures.

The fire a few months ago has hit manufacturing output.

SII fails to deliver

Raja wrote:Any update for Saturday numbers?

2.54 million according to MoHFW. 44.6 million cumulative.

Monday 3.04M
Tuesday 2.17M
Wednesday 2.08M
Thursday 2.20M
Friday 2.72M
Saturday 2.54M

Six day total = 13.5 million
Per day: 2.25 million average

Sunday will probably be only 300-500K as usual.

nandakumar wrote:This has been an excellent thread on a subject of great public importance. So many posters took enormous efforts to put in painstakingly, their insights on a dreaded disease. It is virtually impossible to name them all who contributed to making this thread so informative. As a fellow member I want to record my thanks to all of them.

+1 excellent info and discussion. this high quality discussion is the value add that brf provides

In light of the above discussion regarding covaxin I'd like to share my experience here.
I got my 81yr old mother vaccinated on the 19th. I'd registered her for vaccination through covin website on the 16th for a slot on the 18th. But all of a sudden on the 17th I received sms for cancelletion, asking me to reschedule it. Despite availability(paid/unpaid vaccination)of ample of slots I was unable to reschedule the appointment in any of the hospitals(govt/pvt). Ultimately, I contacted the desired pvt. hospital and they told me to go there for
a paid walk-in appointment. The process was very smooth. They re-registered my mother. Vaccinated her(paid Rs.250). Received online certificate for partial vaccination very promptly with covaxin mentioned in it from covin website. The staff was very helpful and arrangements were good. Upon asking, they revealed that covishield being out of stock the govt had cancelled all appointments across the board from the 18th. And since it was replaced by covaxin, everybody needed to re-register instead of rescheduling the appointment. The hospital despite being small we had token no. 196 on that day and people were still queuing up even after 4pm. My guesstimate would be minimum 300 for that day. The bottomline is, at least in Thane, everybody is being administered covaxin for the past 2 days and overall vaccination numbers are also picking up.

If large vaccination camps are setup in the MH districts with the highest infection rates in Pune, Nagpur, Mumbai, Thane, Nashik, and Aurangabad, then some 3/4 of all current infections can be significantly curbed.

Good information RajD. We need more people giving such in-depth commentary of on the ground experiences.

sivab wrote:^^^SII/BB commercial sales are not same price as price to GoI ($2). SII indicated commercial sales will be at Rs. 1000/dose. BB sold 20 million vaccine to Brazil at $286million. Both work out to ~$14/dose. So they are not cheap either.

https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation ... 49135.html

Covishield to be sold at Rs 1000 in private markets, says SII CEO Adar Poonawalla

https://www.reuters.com/article/health- ... SL1N2KW2OK

Announcing the contract on Thursday, a ministry statement said the deal was worth 1.6 billion reais ($286 million), with the first 8 million doses expected to arrive in March.

That's some solid information. I'm glad they're charging sane prices for commercial sales. There's nothing wrong with charging competitive market prices. There's a place for business and a place for charity, and with 8M doses donated free to other countries, we are doing well by selling it at market prices.

GoI gets a steal on vaccine prices. The US govt pays market prices to Pfizer and Moderna in the $20/dose range I think - perhaps Mort has a link to data on this.

Mort Walker wrote:If large vaccination camps are setup in the MH districts with the highest infection rates in Pune, Nagpur, Mumbai, Thane, Nashik, and Aurangabad, then some 3/4 of all current infections can be significantly curbed.

Indeed, sir, but the question is, does the govt. have cold chain infra in place to support such camps in far flung areas? I hope in city hospitals too the govt. has ensured proper installation of these facilities along with the same for transport, storage. And also, mechanism of strict inspection and enforcement.

Is anyone purposefully delaying their 2nd dose of covidshield? There is some evidence that shows waiting for 12 weeks leads to a significantly better overall efficacy. However, this has not been 100% proven yet. Wondering if any of you are planning to delay the 2nd shot in line with that.

Suraj wrote:Good information RajD. We need more people giving such in-depth commentary of on the ground experiences.

Thanks a lot.

I've been keeping an eye on vaccines in clinical trials, especially the nasal spray version of Covaxin, and Gennova's HCGO19 mRNA vaccine. Neither seem to have gotten to phase 3 trial stage yet.

As COVID-19 immunization drive picks up pace, India’s increased demand poses problems

As coronavirus cases in the country are increasing in an indication of a second wave of the pandemic, the government is also working full force on its nation-wide COVID-19 vaccination drive. With an aim to vaccinate about 30 crore people by August, Centre has ramped up its demand for Pune-based Serum Institute of India’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, which are the two COVID-19 vaccines that are being administered in India at the moment, according to a report in The Indian Express.

The issue with the increased demand, however, is that these two companies are also expected to supply coronavirus vaccine doses to other countries as per their agreements. The report stated that at least one of the two manufacturers have said that the demand from India has exceeded the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses they had earmarked for the country, and so, their ability to fulfil requirements from other countries on time has been impacted.

The issue has been augmented by the fact that several countries are carrying out raw material nationalism and not exporting the required raw materials for the production of COVID-19 vaccine in other countries, ultimately impacting the level of coronavirus vaccine supply in the world. Thus, it can be a cause of worry as to whether the existing supply of COVID-19 vaccines would be sufficient for India as well as for supply to other countries or not. However, considering the fact that India is emerging as the hub for manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines, there is hope that one of the other vaccines in the pipeline could be approved and fill any gaps.
...

Bharat Biotech is also producing another vaccine along with Washington University School of Medicine which would only need a single vaccination dose, but its phase 1 trial is yet to begin.

Gennova Biopharmaceuticals is developing an mRNA-based vaccine and it has received approval for phase 1 and 2 trial, which is expected to begin soon.

Suraj wrote: GoI gets a steal on vaccine prices. The US govt pays market prices to Pfizer and Moderna in the $20/dose range I think - perhaps Mort has a link to data on this.

Page 2 of the report below has the cost of vaccines the US Government is paying the various pharmaceutical companies. Note, the US has purchased 300 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine known as Covishield in India, but is sitting on it. GoI is getting a good deal on it for $2/dose.

Operation Warp Speed Contracts for COVID19 Vaccines and Ancillary Vaccination Materials

Pfizer: $19.9/dose
Moderna: $19.64/dose
Oxford (Covishield): $4/dose (not approved yet)
J&J: $14.56/dose
Novavax: $16/dose (not approved yet)
Sanofi/GSK: $20.70/dose (not approved yet)

Thanks Mort!

At current rate of vaccination, India should overtake the EU in cumulative vaccinations in another 1-2 weeks. India exceeded the US in weekly total vaccinations this week.

So one of my aunt's vaccination appointment on March 18th was cancelled. It seems like it is due to shortage of Covishield vaccines (got it here on BRF)...I hope GoI is urging SII to allot more production capacity to Covaxin. Not sure if its possible because SII got a large grant (2.5B USD IIRC) from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to setup/prep production lines specifically for Covid vaccines. Could be possible that these lines are exclusively allocated to Oxford vaccine. In any ways, I do hope we don't see a slowdown in vaccination rates in the next few weeks due to vaccine shortage. I hope that Covishield shortage will not affect folks who are waiting on their 2nd dose. Most probably GoI is already looking at other vaccine manufacturers in India to supplement BB's production capacity.

Any news on Zydus Cadilla's vaccine? It has completely dropped off from the radar. Also it is time to stop exporting vaccines to other countries (apart from fulfilling existing contractual deals)...prioritise our people first.

It seems like from March 29th onwards, Ohio is making eligible for people over 16 to be vaccinated. Also it is quite possible that UK may face vaccines shortages in the coming weeks.

Zydus's vaccine is in Phase 3 trials. Results are expected in another 1-2 months. Per my info from a private vaccination center, 2nd shots for vaccines are already held in reserve at centers. So if you see a per-day vaccination number of 2 million, another 2 million doses will be in freezers waiting for the 2nd shot appointment. Makes sense then that almost all production is spoken for at this time.

Are 2nd doses also reserved for people who didn't make an appointment and walked in? I somehow don't think so because everyone I know that did a walk-in did not automatically get an appointment for 2nd dose. They plan to just show up again.

Suraj wrote:Good information RajD. We need more people giving such in-depth commentary of on the ground experiences.

I would like to share my experience. Hope the large post will be excused.

Got my elderly relative vaccinated at Dahisar Jumbo Vaccination centre, Mumbai North, 2 days ago. She is 76 years old and had pacemaker implantation 2 years back. She also has mild diabetes, which is under control.

I had helped her to register, using my mobile, on the arogya setu app nearly 2 weeks ago but found that there were no slots for nearly 3 weeks at any nearby centre (within 1 km radius). Her fellow housing society members suggested to book at the jumbo covid centre in the next suburb (about 2.5 kms away), as they had done the same and their experience was quite good. Hence i decided to go ahead accordingly and on 06th March I attempted booking at the Dahisar center. Nearest date available at the first center was 18th March and so booked it for the forenoon slot.

(I found later on that there were 10 sub-centers there in one location and one sub-center had bookings available on 12th March). Also a few days later i got an intimation that private hospitals were also open for vaccinations. I checked in the app and found a private hospital about 0.5 kms away but the earliest available date was 05th April. My aunt however told me not to do any earlier bookings)

So on 18th March (thursday) i booked a cab and took her to the center at around 8.55 AM (got delayed in traffic due to usual mumbai roadwork bottlenecks). On arrival i saw that there were two separate queues, for registered and for non-registered, with mumbai police and contracted security maintaining order. Very polite and calm people. There were about 200 persons (almost 95% senior citizens) in the non-registered queue and just about 12 (including me and my relative) in the registered queue. The queue system was the serpentine type (seen at large temples), there was canopy on top to protect from the sun and along the rails there were wooden planks kept so that the oldies could sit while waiting in the queue. All in all i was pretty impressed at how basic but functional it was. There were also some attendants (male and females) who were assisting the oldies, giving them sanitizer, assisting with wheelchairs, helping them get their Aadhaar documentation ready before entering the centre etc

Around 9.05 AM the doors of the center were opened and some 20 persons from each queue were taken inside at a time. The guards insisted only the ones getting the jab were to go inside, while relatives had to wait outside. Since my relative was not-so tech friendly and she couldn't explain her medical reports clearly to the doctor inside and she was getting flustered, i requested the security person to let me go inside and he let me do so without much fuss. Inside there were good seating arrangements (plastic chairs, big pedestal fans, water coolers etc). We were asked to sit in the chairs and were given a form which had two parts - one where we had to detail out medical conditions, whether undergone surgery etc. The second was the one where they would put the registration number, name and time of vaccine, name of doctor/attendant administering the dose etc. After filling the details which took about 5 minutes we were guided to the seat for administering of the vaccine. We were not given a choice, it was the doctor who checked the medical details and decided which one to be given (my relative was given the Covishield vaccine).

Administering the vaccine injection took barely 2-3 minutes. The doctor and the attendant were both were polite and professional and helped soothe my aunts concerns by reminding her of how many times she must have taken vaccines for herself and her kids. They just asked verbally about her health condition and didn't ask to see her reports (i am not sure but partly i suspect it was so as to not alarm her). After she was given the jab we were asked to wait for half an hour at a separate waiting station which had many chairs and even beds in case anyone wanted to lie down. There were some AC rooms as well and i could see quite a few seniors making full use of the facilities..including posing for photographs Anyway we were out within 30 minutes and back home in another half hour. She didn't have any effects as such at the center and i had arranged for a female relative to stay with her overnight in case she got any fever or body ache. But nothing of that sort happened and all she had was a mild, dull ache in the arm in which she had received the jab. She is all fine now and looking forward for the next dose in about 26 days. In fact so confident is she that she is telling me that she will go all by herself or with some other neighbor.

So that was my experience. What struck me most was the enthusiasm of the senior citizens. It was the younger people accompanying them who looked worried but the oldies, even those using walking sticks, wheel chairs etc were very calm and matter-of-fact. Another thing i noticed was the calm competency of the attendants at the centre and the security guards and cops. They were very careful in handling of the senior citizens and displayed very polite & helpful attitude. Full marks from my side. I hope the vaccination drive picks up exponentially and it goes smoothly for all. Thank you.

Raja wrote:Are 2nd doses also reserved for people who didn't make an appointment and walked in? I somehow don't think so because everyone I know that did a walk-in did not automatically get an appointment for 2nd dose. They plan to just show up again.

Although its called walk-in appointment, technically it means that its only without prior appointment. Every person has to show Adhar card and the staff registers them on the spot for vaccination. Only after one is registered on covin website he/she gets vaccinated and receives partial vaccination certificate very promptly from the site. Also, one gets frequent messages from covin website to rate the app, service etc. So, in essence, no one is vaccinated without being registered. I see very little chance of such a thing happening if at all without collusion from authorities or staff at the center.

Raja wrote:Are 2nd doses also reserved for people who didn't make an appointment and walked in? I somehow don't think so because everyone I know that did a walk-in did not automatically get an appointment for 2nd dose. They plan to just show up again.

all get vaccine innoculation certificate both digital and physcial (the one with PM NaMo foto) it has 2nd dose appointment and yes 2nd dose is cached regardless of appointment or no appointment

If it's 10.4 percent efficacy againt the new variant, does that mean covidshield is now useless and we are back to square one? So what difference it makes whether Covidshield vaccine exists or not other than to ramp up Covaxin production?

Manish Ji, thank you for that detailed and heart-warming story. Human beings do rise to the occasion when demanded, it is good to know courtesy and kindness is still a part of our culture.

Wish to add my thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread, this is my daily morning 'must-read'.