“Free vaccines to the states for all citizens above the age of 18 years.” : PM Modi

“Free vaccines to the states for all citizens above the age of 18 years.” : PM Modi

P.M  Narendra Modi addressed the nation at 5 p.m. on Monday, hours after announcing the same on Twitter.He said that from June 21, the Centre will provide free vaccines to the states for all citizens above the age of 18 years. “The Government of India itself will buy 75% of the total vaccine production from vaccine manufacturers and give it free to the state governments,” PM Modi announced.

In his address to the nation he said,  vaccine supply will be increasing in the coming days. Seven companies in the country are producing different vaccines, 3 vaccine trials at advanced stage. He also added , to increase vaccine availability, the process of procuring vaccines from abroad has been sped up. Experts have also expressed concerns about children. In this direction, the trial of two vaccines is underway. Research is being conducted for a nasal vaccine in the country.

He said that in a major shift in the previous vacccine procurement policy, introduced on May 1 in which the states had to procure 25% of the vaccines from vaccine makers, the Centre will do it on behalf of the sates and supply it to them free of cost.

“A lot of demands were raised that the states should get rights for managing the Covid-19. The states demanded vaccine decentralisation and questions were raised on why senior citizens were vaccinated first. After giving it a lot of thought, we changed the way vaccinations were done. We gave 25% of the work to the states. Now they have started to realise the difficulty the work involves,” the Prime Minister said.

He said the states will be informed about the number of doses they will be getting a week before the supply. “There shouldn’t be differences and debates over vaccines,” he added.