NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain apologises after tweet on Covaxin causes alarm

NDTV anchor Sreenivasan Jain tweeted an apology this morning, after his tweet about the initial batches of Covaxin not being of the “right quality” caused an alarm last night.

In the now-deleted tweet, Jain had said that the head of the government’s vaccine advisory panel, Dr NK Arora, had told him on NDTV’s Reality Check that the initial batches of Covaxin “were not of the right quality”.

The vague tweet raised an alarm, with people wondering if the substandard vaccines had been administered to the public. Half an hour after his initial tweet, Jain said this was in response to questions on Covaxin falling short of targets.

He said Dr Arora had told him the production of Covaxin was initially affected because of quality problems, which had been remedied. He further clarified that these doses with quality issues were never sent out and that the new batches had passed quality checks.

But by then, Jain’s tweet had caused a considerable amount of concern. This morning, Jain admitted that his initial tweet had not made it explicitly clear that the initial batches of Covaxin found substandard did not make their way into the vaccination programme. Adding that his initial tweet could have been worded “much better”, he said it had now been deleted.

He apologised for “any confusion caused”.

NDTV, meanwhile, had tweeted even before Jain last night about what Dr Arora said, but articulated it much more clearly.