Bangalore airport workers transfer cardboard boxes containing scales of Covishield vaccine developed by Serum Institute of India in Bangalore, India, on 12 January 2021.
Stringer | Xinhua | Getty Images
SINGAPORE – India prepares for one of the biggest mass vaccination exercises in the world from Saturday.
The country in South Asia plans to vaccinate about 300 million people, or more than 20% of the 1.3 billion people, against Covid-19 in the first phase of the exercise.
Indian airlines have begun delivering the first doses of vaccines to Delhi and other major cities, including Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru Technology Center, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted earlier this week.
The health care and other front-line workers will be preferred – an estimated 30 million people. This will be followed by those over 50 and other younger people at high risk.
The deployment will involve close cooperation between the central government and states.
India has also developed a digital portal called Co-WIN Vaccine Delivery Management System. According to the Ministry of Health, it will provide real-time information on ‘vaccine stocks, their storage temperature and the individual detection of beneficiaries’.
India has a long history of vaccination campaigns … and will rely on this expertise to spread coronavirus vaccines.
“India’s expertise in vaccine manufacturing and experience with mass vaccination campaigns has prepared it well for ‘phase 1’ vaccinations starting this weekend,” Akhil Bery, South Asia analyst at Eurasia Group, said this week in ‘ wrote a report.
“India has a long history of vaccination campaigns, including its universal immunization program that vaccines 55 million a year, and will rely on this expertise to distribute coronavirus vaccines,” he added.
Emergency approval
India’s drug regulator has approved the limited use of two coronavirus vaccines in emergencies, both of which will be delivered before Saturday at the various vaccination centers.
One of them is a vaccine developed by the British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca and Oxford University, which is manufactured in-house by the Serum Institute of India (SII) and is known locally as Covishield.
Another vaccine, called Covaxin, was locally developed by Bharat Biotech in India in collaboration with the state-run Indian Medical Research Council. Permission for emergency use has been granted as clinical trials continue.
According to some, the approval of Covaxin has been criticized by some because the regulator gave the green light shortly after asking Bharat Biotech for more analysis.
Indian health secretary said on Tuesday that the Indian government had signed procurement agreements for 11 million doses of Covishield at 200 Indian rupees ($ 2.74) per dose. and 5.5 million doses of Covaxin at an average cost of 206 rupees per shot, which is likely to be cheaper than what it will cost in the private market.
Several other candidates, including a second vaccination developed by Zydus Cadila, are undergoing clinical trials.
Potential risks
India currently has more than 10.5 million reported cases of coronavirus, the second largest in the United States. More than 151,000 people have died in Covid-19 in India, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. But daily reported figures show that the number of active cases of infection is declining.
South Asia’s largest country is also the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer and is said to produce about 60% of all vaccines sold worldwide.
As such, the production of Covid vaccines in India is expected to play an important role in the global vaccinations against the disease.
Bery of Eurasia Group said that, despite the government’s optimism, two major risks could potentially delay the launch of the vaccination campaign.
“Firstly, the production capacity of vaccines will be limited, even in the best case,” he said, adding that if local vaccine producers could not deliver the 600 million doses needed to vaccinate the initial 300 million people, then the timeline of India: its exports of vaccines to other countries – could be significantly delayed. ‘
The second risk is that India’s vaccination campaign will rely heavily on state governments “whose capabilities and expertise differ greatly,” Bery said. “Effective coordination will be needed between central and state governments, something that has not yet been (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s strong point.”