COVID-19 vaccination: In good news, the Health Ministry has announced that the CoWIN portal will be made available in Hindi and 14 regional languages by next week. Apart from this, it has also announced that it will be adding 17 more laboratories to the INSACOG network to monitor the variants of COVID-19. 

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According to a statement by the ministry given to PTI, all of these decisions were announced during the 26th high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) meeting on COVID-19, chaired by Health Minister Harsh Vardhan.  During the meeting, he stated that the number of laboratories in the INSACOG network are being increased from 10 to 27, in order to increase the number of samples screened and allow for more spatial analysis. He also lauded the efforts of defence scientists, 

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for launching the country’s first indigenous anti-COVID drug, called the 2-deoxy-D-glucose or 2-DG. The drug has been developed by the DRDO in collaboration with the INMAS and Dr Reddy’s Laboratories. 

Development of the 2-DG drug started in April last year. It recently got the emergency-use approval (EUA) approval from DCGI. Vardhan stated that the drug reduces the dependence of patients on oxygen administration, as it inhibits virus synthesis and energy production for the process inside of the COVID-infected cells.

He also stated that the new COVID-19 cases have dropped to less than three lakh for the first time after 26 days. During the meeting, the Union health secretary announced that the CoWIN platform will be made available in Hindi along with 14 other regional languages by next week. However, he did not reveal all of the regional languages the app will be made available in.

Meanwhile, CoWIN digital portal has been reconfigured to reflect change in dose interval of Covishield vaccine to 12-16 weeks. However, already booked online appointments for second dose of Covishield will remain valid and are not being cancelled by CoWIN, but the beneficiaries are advised to reschedule their appointments for a later date beyond the 84th day from the date of first dose of vaccination.