NEW DELHI – Like from 18:00 on 20 January, the fifth day of the vaccination of COVID-19, India vaccinated a total of 786, 842 people. Over the next few weeks, it aims to vaccinate 30 million health workers and other frontline workers, and by mid-August it plans to vaccinate another 300 million people using two vaccines – Covishield by Oxford University / AstraZeneca in India is made by the Pune-based Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, and Covaxin, a native vaccine supported by the government through Bharat Biotech.
“This scale of vaccination campaign has never been attempted in history and it shows the ability of India,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he opened the vaccination on January 16.
India’s challenges in the run – up to the entry into force were twofold – the second – largest population size for China; and the magnitude of the pandemic in the country, which is second only to the US, with 10.5 million people infected and 151,000 dead.
However, it manages to vaccinate 224,301 people in the first two days compared to China, which vaccinated about 73,000 people in the first two days and aims to vaccinate 50 million people by mid-February. The US managed to vaccinate a million people in the first ten days starting on December 14th.
So far so good, but India is also taking a big risk.
One of the biggest challenges is a growing anti-waxx movement in a country that usually leads the world in mass vaccination plans. The Indian government announced in January that one of the two vaccines selected was Covaxin, which has not yet completed the third phase of its human trials. In a plea filed in the High Court in Bombay, it was said that the manufacturers of the vaccine had not yet published the findings and data of their trials in any article.
People who have received Covaxin so far have had to sign a consent form that states: “In Phase 1 and Phase 2, COVAXIN has shown the ability to produce antibodies against COVID-19. The clinical efficacy of COVAXIN has not yet been established. clinical trials are still being studied in Phase 3. Therefore, it is important to realize that receiving the vaccine does not mean that other precautions related to Covid-19 need not be followed. “
The form also ensures that any adverse reaction to the vaccine will be compensated and that the recipients will receive a form to record problems with the vaccine.
“It’s crazy – one would understand if there are no other vaccines available, or if there is a shortage, but that is not the case,” said Indranil Mukhopadhyay, a health economist in New Delhi, said giving classes at the OP Jindal Global University. .
But Modi’s nationalist government has been vocal about vaccines Made in India since the start of the pandemic. And if the venture bears fruit, India could play a key role in immunizing much of the developing world – especially those with weak logistics networks – with Covaxin, which can be stored at normal cooling temperatures of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius. .
During his speech on January 16, Modi downplayed the concerns about the vaccines as ‘propaganda, rumors and misinformation’, but the fact that Covaxin is still in clinical trial mode and that it has been included in the vaccination program means that By September about 13 percent, Indians were unwilling to be vaccinated – by December, that number had risen to 69 percent.
For vaccination to be effective nationwide, it is crucial that the majority of the population agrees with the government’s plan to take it.
‘It’s currently a wait-and-see situation. As confidence in the vaccines increases, we can overcome the hesitation, ”said Neeraj Jain, Indian Country Director for PATH, which is part of COVAX, a global effort to ensure equitable access to the COVID-19 vaccines.
But India’s challenges ahead are huge, as the public health care system has been in tatters for decades due to a lack of resources. Total health spending in the US is 16.9 percent of its GDP, while in India it stands at 3.6 percent. There was a shortage of 600,000 doctors and 2 million nurses in the country, as in the latest report in 2019.
But India trumps every other country with its years of experience in mass vaccination programs, despite a lack of resources. It manages one of the largest vaccination programs in the world that vaccinates more than 26 million newborns and 29 million pregnant women.
This program has ensured an established network of refrigeration chains and transportation and storage facilities for the vaccines and an army of health workers trained to administer and reach these vaccines to the last mile. It has also successfully hosted immunization campaigns against polio and smallpox. Smallpox was eradicated from the country in 1975 using a campaign called Target Zero, while in 2014 the country was declared polio-free.
India, known as the pharmacy of the world, manufactures more than 60 percent of the vaccines sold worldwide. As a result of these experiences, as early as August, India began preparing for a nationwide vaccination of vaccines by setting up a group of experts to oversee the vaccine administration for COVID-19. In December, the government published a detailed operating guideline that left nothing to chance – including the introduction of vaccination centers and the specific role of each vaccine.
In the run-up to the launch, more than 100,000 interns were trained using countless sham exercises, including three dry runs to identify errors.
“I think we are most countries at the forefront when it comes to planning,” Jain told The Daily Beast. “I look at the rest of the world and how the deployment of vaccines is handled even in smaller populations, and I think it’s going great with us.”
According to the report, India’s vaccine logistics network consists of 27,000 cold chain points, 76,000 items of cold chain equipment, 700 coolers, 55,000 cool chain handlers and 2.5 million health workers. But this network currently handles about 60 million of the population and will have to be quickly recruited to cover 1.35 billion people in the coming months.
“Speaking of scale, it’s not that big yet, but it’s going to be massive as we enter the second and third phases, outside of the health and frontline workers,” Mukhopadhyay said. “And my fear is that stopping routine vaccination services or other health care activities could be costly.”
When the pandemic broke out in India, the government diverted its entire health care force to focus on spreading the virus – disrupting other health care services and delivery, including existing vaccination programs.
The Indian government anticipated this fallout from the first months of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and said in a statement that it had ordered the countries to carry out COVID-19 vaccinations on four days of the week ” minimize the disruption of the routine. health services. ”
But, Mukhopadhyay said, the burden of vaccination will gradually rest on the health workers. ‘The pandemic has exposed the limitations of our public health. We need to enlarge quickly to fill these critical gaps, ”he told The Daily Beast.
India is the country that can best do this. All Modi has to do now is ensure that the effectiveness data for Covaxin is released, while there is still time for him to convince about a billion people to put their trust in India’s homemade solution.