People aged more than 60 years and those who are over 45 years with comorbidities will be able to get Covid-19 vaccine at a government centre or a private hospital from March 1.
Announcing this, the central government on Wednesday said people above 45 years of age will have to show a certificate stating they have comorbidities.
Speaking at a media briefing, Union minister Prakash Javadekar said that the vaccinations will be free of cost at around 10,000 government centres spread across the country.
Vaccines will also be provided at 20,000 private centres but people will have to pay to get inoculated, he added.
“The second phase of the world’s largest vaccination drive will start from Monday in which anybody above 60 years, that may not be less than 10 crore people in the country, and 45 years plus with co-morbidities will be given vaccines in 10,000 government medical facilities and also over 20,000 private hospitals,” Javadekar said.
“Whoever goes to the government centre will be administered vaccine free of cost. Indian government will pay for them. The government will purchase the necessary doses and will send them to all the states,” he said.
Those who want to get vaccination from private hospitals will have to pay, but the amount will be decided by the union health ministry within the next three-four days as they are in discussions with manufacturers as well as hospitals, he added.
Javadekar said the world’s largest vaccination started on January 16, 2021 with 1,07,67,000 people vaccinated and 14 lakh also having received a second dose.
“This section was primarily for health workers and frontline workers and the whole expenditure was borne by the government, they were vaccinated for free,” he said.
Javadekar asserted that the vaccination in India has been successful, “faultless with hardly any complaints”.
So far, India has approved only two vaccines for its Covid-19 vaccination drive. The first one is Covishield which has been developed by the Oxford University and AstraZeneca and is being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.
The second vaccine is Covaxin, developed and manufactured by Bharat Biotech.
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