A nurse gives a recording of the Covishield vaccine in Mumbai on January 16.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh / Bloomberg
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh / Bloomberg
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Most of the world is struggling to get enough vaccines to vaccinate their population. India has the opposite problem: many shots, but a shortage of people willing to take it.
As India one of the world’s largest vaccination programs, some healthcare workers and other frontline workers are hesitant due to safety concerns about a vaccine that has not yet completed phase III trials. As of Monday, only about 56% of the people eligible to stand a chance emerged in a country with the world’s second worst Covid-19 outbreak.
Unless the vaccination rate increases significantly, by July India will be much less than its target of vaccinating 300 million people – or about a quarter of the population. It will put back global efforts to curb the virus and sniff it back. optimism that a recovery will take root in an economy that is the biggest annual shrinkage in records dating back to 1952.
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“At least 40% of the doctors here are insecure and want to wait,” said Vinod Kumar, a resident doctor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Patna, in the eastern state of Bihar. “To run a vaccine test on us when there are no doctors in India, health workers do not make sense.”
While the vaccine hesitates appeared in places like Japan and Brazil, and China’s candidates also faced questions given the extent of the problem in India is by far the largest. The biggest problems facing places like the US and Europe are mostly due to scarce supplies rather than vaccine acceptance, and some countries turn to New Delhi for help: India says it could take 500 million shots a month supply for export, and countries such as the UK, Belgium and Saudi Arabia tried to buy it.
Covishield production at a Serum Institute facility in Pune, Maharashtra, on 22 January.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh / Bloomberg
The domestic vaccination program in India gives one of two shots: the AstraZeneca Plc vaccine, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India Ltd., or the Covaxin shot developed by Bharat Biotech International Ltd., a private company in Hyderabad. India’s approval of the Bharat Biotech shot, developed by government – backed research groups, has drawn widespread criticism from scientists due to the lack of complete data.
“Many in our institute do not feel comfortable with Covaxin because we do not know how effective it is,” said Adarsh Pratap Singh, a member of the Resident Doctors Association of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. , said. “To build trust among people, the government must encourage data, evidence from the hearings and free and fair discussions.”
Both the company and the government defended the shot. Krishna Ella, Bharat Biotech’s chairman, said earlier this month that the company had conducted ‘200% honest clinical trials’ and that it had produced 16 safe and effective vaccinations. “Indian scientists want to base themselves on other Indian scientists,” he said. said while rejecting criticism in a January 4 virtual press briefing. A Bharat Biotech spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government, meanwhile, has called on health workers to be vaccinated. Health Minister Harsh Vardhan sent tweets requesting “#CoronaWarriors” take the womb, while dispelling rumors that the vaccine may cause infertility. A spokesman for the federal health ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Harsh Vardhan is holding a bottle of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin on January 16.
Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee / Bloomberg
“The hesitation of vaccines among health workers must end. I plead on behalf of the government to please accept it, because no one knows how this pandemic will form in the future,” said UK Paul, a member of the planning body Niti. Aayog, and note that he took the Covaxin shot without any adverse consequences.
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“These two vaccines are safe,” he said. “We have a system to detect it, and if there is an unusual signal, it will respond as it should.”
The initial fear and doubt at the start of vaccine deployment is normal, said Preeti Sudan, former secretary of the federal Department of Health and Family Welfare. India has been successful in its polio vaccination program, she believes noticed, after launching a massive campaign involving children, mothers and opinion leaders to help dispel fears of vaccines.
Low vaccination rates
India has spread about 2 million shots nationwide since Monday. In Madhya Pradesh, the largest state in Central India, about 75% of the enrolled people turned up for vaccination on January 21, while the rate in Bihar was 51.6% lower two days later. On January 19, about 55% of those eligible were vaccinated in Rajasthan and 54% in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, according to state government data.
Although the hesitation is related to both vaccines, people are very wary of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. In Tamil Nadu, for example, only 23.5% of the assigned Covaxin received the shots on January 19, compared to 56% for the Serum Institute’s Covishield, the data show.
Nirmalya Mohapatra, a physician at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi, plans to wait and see for more clarity before being vaccinated with the Bharat Biotech admission. If he were to make a choice now, he would opt for Covishield, as the efficacy data has been reviewed by leading medical journals.
“Covaxin may be a better vaccine in the future,” said Mohapatra, who is also vice president of the hospital’s doctors’ association. “But for the time being, there is some fear due to the lack of a full trial.”