India will begin innoculating children in the 5-11 age group , against Covid-19, as soon as it receives recommendations regarding the same from the expert group, Union Health Minister, Mansukh Mandaviya, said on Friday.

Reports had emerged that the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) of the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) had recommended the use of Biological E’s Corbevax for children aged 5-11 years.

According to Mandaviya, the SEC has to send recommendations to the DCGI whose final nod is required before the rollout happens. “We will go by what the expert panel says on vaccinating children below the age of 12. The SEC has to give its recommendations to DCGI and then the experts group will take a call. This has been a standard practice,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the curtain raiser for a FICCI event.

At present, Corbevax, India’s third home-grown vaccine, is being administered to children aged 12 -14 years.

Uptick in cases

India has been witnessing a steady uptick in Covid cases over the last few days with school-going children and students across educational institutions getting infected. On a 24-hour-basis, there were 2,451 fresh infections – a 3 per cent jump- and 54 deaths, of which there was a backlog of 48 deaths from Kerala. In the country, recovery rate dipped slightly to 98.75 per cent, while daily positivity rate stood at 0.55 per cent.

Schools in the Delhi-NCR region are amongst the worst hit while in a recent development, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras has beenemerging as a Covid hotspot as 30 students of the institute have tested positive for Covid-19.

SOPs issued

In Delhi, a set of standard operating procedures have been notified for schools which include thermal scanning (of students, staff guests), setting up quarantine rooms, not sharing of lunch and stationery among students. Teachers will be required to ask about Covid-19 related symptoms among students or family members.

States like Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab have brought back their mask mandates (in public places) with some of them announcing ₹500 fines for failure to wear facemasks in public places.

Reducing Imports

According to Mandaviya, PLI schemes in pharma have helped bring down import dependence by at least 25 per cent. API and raw material (which include intermediary ones) have gone down.

Moreover, FDI inflows into the sector has been to the tune of ₹23,000 crore in a two-year-period. In FY21, FDI inflows were around ₹11,000 crore, whereas in FY22 it stood at ₹12,000 crore.

The government, Mandaviya said, is also mulling a policy to promote manufacturing of patented drugs in India. “We already are the pharma factory of the world and our aim now is to be self-reliant. Our vaccines are affordable varying between $2–3.5 against a global average of $20,” he said.

In fact, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson too hailed India for being “the world’s pharmacy” and said that he took a Covid-19 vaccine developedby the country. “I have the Indian jab (Covid- 19 vaccine) in my arm, and it did me good. Many thanks to India,” Johnson said during a joint media address with PM Narendra Modi.

Published on April 22, 2022