Coronavirus vaccine: India to begin world’s biggest drive

India is set to begin the world's largest Covid-19 vaccination programme, which aims to protect more than 1.3 billion people from the disease.

Millions of doses of two approved vaccines - Covishield and Covaxin - have been shipped across the country.

They will go first to health workers and frontline workers, then to other at-risk groups.

India has recorded the second-highest number of Covid-19 infections in the world after the United States.

An estimated 10 million health workers will be vaccinated in the first round, followed by policemen, soldiers, municipal and other front-line workers.

Next in line will be people aged over 50 and anyone under 50 with serious underlying health conditions. India's electoral rolls, which contain details of some 900 million voters, will be used to identify eligible recipients.

The government plans to vaccinate 300 million people by early August. This will happen in state-run health care centres, schools, colleges, community halls, municipal offices and wedding halls.

India's drug regulator has given the green light to two vaccines - Covishield (the local name for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine developed in the UK) and Covaxin, locally-made by pharma company Bharat Biotech.

But concerns have been raised over the efficacy of Covaxin because the regulator's emergency approval came before the completion of Phase 3 clinical trials. The regulator and the manufacturer have said the vaccine is safe, and that the efficacy data would be available by February.

Both vaccines will be given as two injections, 28 days apart, with the second dose being a booster. Immunity would begin to kick in after the first dose but reaches its full effect 14 days after the second dose.(BBC)