India wants to deliver 600 million coronavirus shots in the next six to eight months starting in January, with emergency use approval for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine expected within days. The country’s drug regulator is also considering similar approvals for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and another developed by India’s Bharat Biotech. State health officials had set up 19 vaccination centres, each with 25 dummy beneficiaries played by health workers, who would help test out the entire inoculation sequence, including online monitoring systems, Shivahare said. “The cold chain infrastructure for distribution of the vaccine is also being tested as a part of the dry run,” he said. “In the first phase, we shall be administering the vaccine only to healthcare workers,” Assam’s junior health minister Pijush Hazarika said.

Source: bd News24 December 28, 2020 10:52 UTC