COVID-19 vaccine will be provided for free: Delhi Health Minister

New Delhi [India], January 2 (ANI): Delhi Health Minister Satyender Jain on Saturday asserted that the vaccination for COVID-19 will be provided for free in the national capital.
The health minister inspected the dry run for COVID-19 vaccination drive, which was being conducted at three centres in Delhi such as GTB Hospital, Daryagunj dispensary and Venkateshwar Hospital.
Briefing the media, Jain said, "All the arrangements are made and we will make 1,000 COVID vaccination centres in Delhi. I believe we will be able to vaccinate 1 lakh people in a day. We have made monitoring stations for every centre."
When asked whether the vaccination will be free of cost, Jain clarified, "Yes, it will be free. Medicines and treatment are provided for free in Delhi, anyway."
Health minister said about 51 lakh people comprising the three priority groups will be vaccinated in the first phase. "I am examining dry runs for three types of setups including government hospital, government dispensary and private hospital. All the inoculated people will be kept under 30 minutes of observation," added Jain.
On COVID-19 statistics, Delhi Health Minister said, "Yesterday (Friday) there were 585 new cases and the positivity rate was 0.73 per cent. For the last 8-9 days, the positivity rate has been less than 1 per cent."
On the question of the new strain of COVID-19, Jain stated, "40-42 cases of new strain surfaced in Delhi. All of them has been isolated and kept in LNJP Hospital."
Meanwhile, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Saturday stated that COVID-19 vaccine will be provided free of cost across the country.
The dry run will be conducted by all the states and Union Territories from Saturday. Vaccination drill is being conducted in all states/UTs today in 116 districts across 259 sites.
According to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW), the objective of the dry run for COVID-19 vaccine introduction is to "assess operational feasibility in the use of COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-WIN) application in a field environment, to test the linkages between planning and implementation and to identify the challenges and guide the way forward prior to actual implementation". (ANI)