Azim Premji, Anand Mahindra, AIIMS Chief call for private participation in India’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout

• In a closed door meeting with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Premji reportedly pitched a plan to deliver the COVID-19 vaccine to 500 million people within 60 days.
• Earlier, Mahindra group chairman Anand Mahindra had called for the participation of private players to boost the vaccination drive in India.
• India has administered over 1.11 million doses of its approved vaccines 'Covishield' and 'Covaxin'.

India is currently in the middle of the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccine rollout and to speed things up private participation might soon be important.

After a callout from Dr. Randeep Guleria, the director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for a public-private partnership in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout to capture the small window of opportunity with the drop in cases in India, billionaire Azim Premji is the latest to speak out regarding the same.

In a closed door meeting with India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Premji reportedly pitched a plan to deliver the COVID-19 vaccine to 500 million people within 60 days. “I think that’s a practicality. I think it is very important the government considers this as a major supplement to the effort,” he said during the meeting, reported Times of India.

Last week, Mahindra group chairman Anand Mahindra had called for private players to boost the vaccination drive in India.


On February 20, AIIMS Chief Dr. Guleria, at an event, stressed on the importance of public-private partnership for scale. "Vaccinating health care workers and front line workers is probably the easy part as far as Phase 1 is concerned as you know who needs to be vaccinated. The number is not that large. Once you start the process to vaccinate 27 crore individuals, in that scenario we must have a robust programme in place where you have the list of people to be vaccinated. We need to develop a mechanism where the public and private sector actually start rolling out the vaccine at a large scale," Guleria said.

India will start the next phase of COVID-19 vaccination for over 27 crore individuals – people above 50 years of age. The phase is set to begin from March first week.

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As the vaccination reaches out to the masses, the world’s largest vaccine maker Serum Institute of India has been asked to focus on India’s needs, tweeted its CEO Adar Poonawalla.


According to latest reports, India has administered over 1.11 million doses of its approved vaccines 'Covishield' and 'Covaxin'.

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