On Saturday, India recorded the highest daily wave in the world with over 3.46 lakh Covid infections which took the country’s caseload to 1.66 crores. The pandemic showed its worst face by increasing the death rate to 2,624 in a single day. The top hospitals are sending SOS messages, patients and their family and friends amid a shortage of medical oxygen and hospital beds.
AIIMS chief Dr Randeep Guleria told NDTV on Saturday that regions with Covid positivity rates over 10 per cent must be locked down, as the government struggles to hold a deadly second wave that has triggered an oxygen crisis in Delhi and left India’s medical infrastructure near failure.
Dr Guleria said the country’s healthcare system was meeting the price for the government’s failure to assume the spread of infections via more dynamic variants of the virus and signalled the urgent need to break the chain of transmission and reduce the skyrocketing active caseload.
In the meantime, Bharat Biotech said that the Covaxin vaccine will cost Rs 600 for state governments and Rs 1,200 for private hospitals. Exporting cost of the COVID-19 vaccine will be in the range of $15 to $20. The other vaccine maker in the country, Serum Institute of India, will sell its Covishield at Rs 400 a shot to states and Rs 600 to private hospitals.
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