COVID-19 positive Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij was on Tuesday evening shifted to the Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon, a family member said. Vij (67), who is also the state’s home minister, was admitted to the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in Rohtak on Saturday night after he complained of discomfort. Earlier, he was being treated at the Civil Hospital in Ambala.
Vij’s younger brother Rajinder Vij told reporters outside PGIMS: “We are shifting him to Medanta because we are not seeing the kind of improvement which we were expecting.” He said the doctors at the Rohtal hospital “gave their best treatment” and “provided best facilities”, yet there has not been much improvement (in Anil vij’s condition). Asked if the minister had insisted on being treated in a government facility, Rajinder Vij said: “That is a different issue, but this decision (to have him shifted to Medanta) has been taken by the family.” He said Anil Vij has an infection in the lungs while his other parameters are normal.
The Medanta Hospital is about 80 km from PGIMS. Earlier in the day, Haryana BJP president Om Prakash Dhankar visited the PGIMS and met the doctors there to enquire about the minister’s health.
“He will recover soon and will be back to his normal routine,” Dhankar had told PTI. On Monday, Anil Vij was examined by a special medical board comprising a team of senior doctors of PGIMS.
A medical bulletin issued by the hospital had said that the vital parameters of the minister were normal and he was undergoing convalescent plasma therapy However, the minister had fever, it said. The bulletin said that Anil Vij had “moderate COVID-19 with bilateral viral pneumonia”.
The minister had last month got one shot of the two-dose trial of the COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin after he offered to be a volunteer. He had tested positive for COVID-19 on December 5. The firebrand BJP leader had offered to be the first volunteer in the phase three trials for Covaxin, an indigenous potential vaccine being developed by Bharat Biotech against COVID-19.
He was administered the dose on November 20 at the Civil Hospital in Ambala Cantonment, about 50 km from Chandigarh. Bharat Biotech had said that clinical trials of the vaccine are based on a two-dose schedule, given 28 days apart. The vaccine efficacy will be determined two weeks after the second dose, it said. Covaxin has been designed to be protective two weeks after volunteers receive the second dose. The Union health ministry had also stepped in to say that Covaxin is a two-dose anti-coronavirus vaccine and that Vij was given only the first dose a fortnight before he tested positive.
“The antibodies against the infection build up in a human being only after a specific number of days pass after the second dose of the vaccine is taken. This is a two-dose vaccine. The minister in question has taken only one dose of the vaccine,” the ministry had said in a statement. Vij had earlier said that he had gone to Panipat a few days prior to testing positive for coronavirus where he spent two to three hours with a BJP leader, who too tested positive for COVID-19.
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