India to offer Covid jabs for over-60s from March

India plans to expand its vast but faltering coronavirus vaccination programme from March 1 by offering jabs to the over 60s, the government said yesterday.

The country began vaccinating its 1.3bn population last month and plans to inoculate 300mn people by July, but so far the rollout has been limited to healthcare workers and other frontline staff.

However, from Monday people over 60 and those over 45 with multiple medical conditions can be vaccinated for free at 10,000 government hospitals and nearly 20,000 private clinics for a charge.

“Those who want to get vaccinations from private hospitals will have to pay. The amount to be paid will be decided and declared by the health ministry within the next three to four days,” Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said after a cabinet meeting.

The vaccination programme, one of the world’s largest, has so far seen 12.2mn shots administered, according to the health ministry. But at the current pace it will take several years to inoculate 300mn people.

The vaccines being used are the AstraZeneca jab, made domestically by Indian giant the Serum Institute, and the homegrown Covaxin developed by Bharat Biotech, which is yet to complete trials. The makers of Russia’s Sputnik V have also applied for emergency use approval.

The head of Serum, which other poor countries are relying on for supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine, said on Sunday it had been “directed to prioritise the huge needs of India”.

The government also warned that breaches of coronavirus protocols could worsen an infection surge in many states.

Nearly a month after the health minister declared that Covid-19 had been contained, states such as Maharashtra in the west and Kerala in the south have reported a spike in cases amid growing reluctance to wear masks and maintain social distancing.

India’s infections are the second highest in the world at 11.03mn, swelled by a further 13,742 in the past 24 hours, health ministry data showed.

Deaths rose by a two-week high of 104 to 156,567. “Any laxity in implementing stringent measures to curb the spread, especially in view of new strains of virus..., could compound the situation,” the ministry said.

The health ministry said that while cases in the states of Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab, as well as the federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir, were rising, the proportion of high-accuracy RT-PCR tests in those places was falling because many states prefer antigen tests, which are cheaper and quicker but less accurate.