Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday that no tax will be charged on mucormycosis medicine Amphotericin B.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman
GST Council Meet: Amid the Coronavirus pandemic, in order to give relief to the patients of black fungus and COVID 19, Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday that no tax will be charged on mucormycosis medicine Amphotericin B.
This decision has been taken during a GST council meeting. Not just that, another point that has been highlighted by the GST Council that they would impose nil tax on medicine Tocilizumab. Other than this they have decided to reduce tax from 12% to 5% on Remdesivir and on an anti-coagulant Heparin from 12% to 5%. Remdesivir has widely been used to treat coronavirus disease (Covid-19) patients.
This decision has come after the disease resulted in loss of lives in many states. Many state governments have declared the disease an epidemic last month.
In order to productively treat the disease, the Centre on Saturday also allocated at least 170,000 vials of Amphotericin B to all states and Union Territories.
The government also mentioned that it has allocated 321,100 vials of Liposomal Amphotericin-B to all the states until June 9.
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In order to work speedily on the production of Liposomal Amphotericin B injections, the government last month gave licence to 5 companies.
Many Mucormycosis cases were shot up during the second wave of the Covid-19 crisis wherein thousands of cases were reported across the country.
Mucormycosis affects the eyes, noses, sinuses, lungs, brain and can be found in the intestines of a patient. The symptoms of the disease are blindness, that can create lesions and also become fatal. Diabetics and people who are immunocompressed are more prone to such disease, said experts.
Apart from these announcements, the body at the GST Council meet decided to retain the 5% tax rate on Covid-19 vaccines. They have also announced relief on ventilator masks, canula and helmet by reducing the tax from 12 percent to 5 percent. Reduction on taxes have been highlighted even on BiPAP machine and high flow nasal canula devices from 12% to 5%.
