India on Saturday began vaccinating health workers, arguably the world’s largest vaccination campaign COVID-19, and they joined the ranks of richer countries where the effort is already well underway.
India is home to the largest vaccine producers in the world and has one of the largest vaccination programs. But there is no playbook for the scope of the current challenge.
Indian authorities are planning an initial round of 300 million vaccinations – roughly the population of the US. The recipients will include 30 million doctors, nurses and other front-line employees, followed by 270 million people over the age of 50 or with underlying medical conditions.
Madhura Patil, a health worker, gestures while receiving COVID-19 vaccine in the presence of Uddhav Thackeray, who is wearing a white dress, Chief Minister of Maharashtra State in Mumbai, India, on Saturday, January 16, 2021. India has health workers start vaccinating. Saturday in what is probably the largest COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the world, joining the ranks of richer countries where the effort is already well underway. (AP Photo / Rajanish Kakade)
For health workers who helped the country with the deadly plague, the shots gave hope that life could soon return to normal.
“I’m excited to be one of the first to get the vaccine,” said Gita Devi, a nurse, as she lifted her left sleeve to get the shot.
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“I’m glad to get a vaccine manufactured by India and that we do not have to depend on others for it,” Devi said. He treated patients in a hospital in Lucknow, the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh in the heartland of India.
The first dose was given to a sanitation worker at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the campaign with a national television speech.
A Kashmiri doctor receives a COVID-19 vaccine at a government hospital in Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir, on Saturday, January 16, 2021. India began vaccinating health workers on Saturday in probably the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccination campaign. from richer countries where the effort is already well underway. (AP Photo / Dar Yasin)
“We are launching the world’s largest vaccination campaign and it shows the world our ability,” Modi said. He begged citizens not to believe “rumors” questioning the safety of the vaccines.
It was not clear whether Modi (70) received the vaccine. His government said politicians would not be considered priority groups in the first phase of implementation.
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Health officials have not specified what percentage of India’s nearly 1.4 billion people will be targeted by the campaign. But experts believe it will almost certainly be the largest COVID vaccination field in the world.
The sheer scale, however, has its obstacles. India, for example, plans to rely heavily on a digital platform to track the delivery and delivery of vaccines. But public health experts point out that the internet remains volatile in large parts of the country and does not exist in some remote areas.
A hospital staff receives a COVID-19 vaccine at a government hospital in Srinagar, Kashmir, India, on Saturday, January 16, 2021. India vaccinated health workers on Saturday in what is arguably the largest COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the world. from richer countries where the effort is already well underway. (AP Photo / Dar Yasin)
About 100 people would be vaccinated on the first day in each of the 3,006 centers across the country, the Ministry of Health said.
News cameras captured the injections in hundreds of hospitals, highlighting the pent-up hope that vaccination was the first step in overcoming the pandemic that devastated the lives of so many Indians and plagued the country’s economy.
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On January 4, India approved the use of two vaccines, one developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca in the United Kingdom, and the other by the Indian company Bharat Biotech. Last week, cargo planes flew 16.5 million shots to various Indian cities.
But doubts about the effectiveness of the home-grown vaccine create obstacles to the ambitious plan.
Hospital staff go through the documents before COVID-19 vaccination at a hospital in Kolkata, India, on Saturday, January 16, 2021. India began vaccinating health workers on Saturday, probably the world’s largest vaccination campaign COVID-19, and participated in the ranks of richer countries where the effort is already well under way. (AP Photo / Bikas Das)
Health experts are concerned that the shortcut used by the regulation to approve the Bharat Biotech vaccine without waiting for concrete data that could show its effectiveness in preventing coronavirus disease can boost the vaccine’s hesitation . At least one state health minister opposed its use.
In New Delhi, doctors from Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, one of the largest in the city, demanded that they be given the AstraZeneca vaccine instead of the one developed by Bharat Biotech. A doctors’ union at the hospital said many of the members were a little “afraid of the lack of full trial” for the vaccination being brought home.
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“At the moment we do not have the choice to choose between the vaccines,” said dr. Nirmalaya Mohapatra, vice president of the hospital’s Resident Doctors Association, said.
India’s health ministry has expressed criticism, saying both vaccines are safe.
Hospital staff meet to sit a health worker after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine at a government hospital in Hyderabad, India, on Saturday, January 16, 2021. India began vaccinating health workers on Saturday in probably the world’s largest COVID-19. vaccination campaign, joining the ranks of richer countries where the effort is already well under way. (AP Photo / Mahesh Kumar A.)
According to SP SP Kalantri, the director of a rural hospital in Maharashtra, the country hardest hit in India, such an approach was worrying. He said the adoption of the regulations was in a hurry.
“The government is in a hurry to be populist and is making decisions that may not be in the best interests of the common man,” Kalantri said.
Against the backdrop of the increasing global death toll from COVID-19 – which reached 2 million on Friday – the clock is ticking to vaccinate as many people as possible.
In affluent countries, including the United States, Britain, Israel, Canada, and Germany, millions of citizens have already received some protection with at least one dose of vaccine developed at revolutionary speed and quickly allowed to be used.
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But elsewhere, immunization drives have barely come off the ground. Many experts predict another year of loss and hardship in places like Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for about a quarter of the COVID-19 deaths in the world.
India is second to the US with 10.5 million confirmed cases, and ranks third in the number of deaths, behind the US and Brazil, with 152,000.
According to the University of Oxford, more than 35 million doses of different COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide.
While most available vaccine doses have been captured by affluent countries, COVAX, a UN-backed project to deliver shots to developing parts of the world, lacks vaccines, money and logistical assistance.
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Consequently, dr. Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at the World Health Organization, warned this week that it is highly unlikely that herd immunity – which requires at least 70% of the world to be vaccinated – will be achieved this year.
“Even if it happens in a few pockets, in a few countries, it will not protect people all over the world,” she said.