One crore health workers will get priority in vaccination against Covid-19: Centre

"With the recommendation of NEGVAC, about one crore health workers in the country should be given priority in vaccination. After that, frontline police personnel and senior citizens, as well as those with serious illnesses, should be vaccinated," Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said during a press briefing.

He informed that process of collecting of healthcare workers' databases has begun across various states and UTs. The Government has developed a digital platform called Co-WIN software for the same where all the data will be uploaded.

The Co-WIN software enables the free downloading of a mobile application which needs to be accessed for those who wants to get vaccinated by registering themselves.

There are five modules in Co-WIN app -- administrator module, registration module, vaccination module, beneficiary acknowledgement module and report module.

Bhushan informed that there are multiple vaccine candidates in different stages of development and some of them may get licensed in the next few weeks.

"Vaccines require 2-3 doses, 3 to 4 weeks apart. Even after vaccination, COVID precautions must be undertaken," he said.

Meanwhile, he informed that India has achieved a "significant milestone in its fight against COVID."

"The new confirmed cases in the last 24 hours have fallen below 27,000 (26,567) for the first time after nearly 5 months. The new cases were 26,506 last on 10th July, 2020," said the Health secretary.

"In another achievement, India’s active caseload has fallen under the 4% mark today. The active cases have drastically declined to 3.83 lakh. The total positive cases of the country are 3,83,866 and comprise (3.96%) of the total cases," said Bhushan.

Ten States/UTs have contributed 72.50% of the new cases.

Kerala has reported 3,272 cases in the last 24 hours. Maharashtra recorded 3,075 new cases while West Bengal has registered 2,214 new cases yesterday.

"75.58% of the 385 case fatalities that reported in the past 24 hours are from Ten States/UTs. 16.36% of new fatalities reported are from Delhi which reported 63 deaths. West Bengal also saw a fatality count of 48 while Maharashtra reported 40 new deaths," the Union Health Ministry data stated.