Vaccination prevented 1 lakh Covid deaths in third wave, says Mansukh Mandaviya

New Delhi, February 18

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya today said vaccines prevented at least one lakh deaths in the country during the third Covid wave.

Releasing a book titled “A Nation to Protect: Leading India through the Covid Crisis” written by Piyam Gandhi-Mody, Mandaviya said he would consider the world safe from Covid only when the virus vanished globally.

He said major foreign Covid vaccine manufacturers wanted indemnity and complete and sovereign immunity waiver to supply vaccines to India, but the government had clarified that they could do business in India only on India’s terms. He said conditions the foreign vaccine makers set to supply jabs to India only cemented the domestic resolve to make indigenous shots. —