NEW DELHI: As at six in the afternoon of January 20, the fifth day of the launch of the COVID-19 vaccine, India had inoculated a total of 786, 842 people. Over the next few weeks, it aims to inoculate 30 million health workers and other front-line workers, and by mid-August it plans to vaccinate another 300 million people with the help of two vaccines: Covishield University of Oxford / AstraZeneca, which is manufactured in India. the Serum Institute, based in Pune, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, and Covaxin, a self-produced, government-backed vaccine from Bharat Biotech.
“This scale of vaccination campaign has never been attempted in history and this demonstrates India’s capability,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said at the opening of the vaccine launch on 16 January.
India’s challenges in the run-up to the launch were twofold: its population size, which is only second in China; and the magnitude of the pandemic in the country, which ranks second only to the United States with 10.5 million people infected and 151,000 dead.
However, it managed to vaccinate 224,301 people in the first two days compared to China, which had inoculated about 73,000 people in the first two days and aims to vaccinate 50 million people by mid-February. The United States had managed to vaccinate a million people in the first ten days as of December 14th.
So far, so good, but India is also taking a huge risk.
One of the biggest challenges is a growing anti-vaxx movement in a country that often leads the world in mass inoculation plans. The Indian government announced in January that one of the two vaccines chosen was Covaxin, which has not yet completed the third phase of its human trials. A petition filed in the Bombay High Court said the vaccine manufacturers have not yet published the findings and data of their trials in any document.
People who have received Covaxin so far have had to sign a consent form stating that “in Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials, COVAXIN has demonstrated the ability to produce antibodies against COVID-19. Clinical efficacy of COVAXIN has not yet been and is still being studied in phase 3 clinical trials. Therefore, it is important to appreciate that receiving the vaccine does not mean that other Covid-19-related precautions do not need to be followed.
The form also ensures that any adverse reactions to the vaccine will be compensated and a form was given to the recipients to record any problems with the vaccine.
“This is crazy: it would be understood if there was no other vaccine available or there was a shortage, but it is not,” said Indranil Mukhopadhyay, a New Delhi-based health economist who teaches at OP Jindal. Global University.
But the Modi nationalist government has expressed its vocation on vaccines against Made in India since the beginning of the pandemic. And if the bet pays off, India could play a major role in immunizing a large part of the developing world, especially those with weak vaccine logistics networks, with Covaxin, which can be stored at temperatures of normal refrigeration 2 to 8 degrees Celsius.
During his Jan. 16 speech, Modi’s speech dismissed vaccine-related concerns as “propaganda, rumors and misinformation,” but it remains a fact that Covaxin is still in clinical trial mode and that its inclusion in the program vaccination has meant that in September around 13, the percentage of Indians was not willing to be vaccinated, in December, the figure had risen to 69%.
For the vaccine to be effective nationwide, it is crucial that the majority of the population follow the government’s plan to get it.
“It simply came to our notice then. As confidence in vaccines grows, we will be able to overcome the hesitation, “said Neeraj Jain, director of the Indian country of PATH, which is part of COVAX, a global effort to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. .
But India’s challenges in the future are huge, as its public health system has been eroded for decades by lack of resources. Total health care spending in the US is 16.9% of its GDP, while in India it stands at 3.6%. There was a shortage of 600,000 doctors and 2 million nurses in the country, according to the latest 2019 report.
But India surpasses all other countries with its long experience in mass vaccination programs, despite lack of resources. It manages one of the largest vaccination programs in the world that administers vaccines to more than 26 million newborns and 29 million pregnant women.
This program has secured an established network of cold chains and vaccine transport and storage facilities and an army of health workers trained to administer and reach these vaccines to the last mile. He also successfully carried out polio and smallpox vaccination campaigns. Smallpox was eradicated from the country in 1975 with the help of a campaign called Target Zero, while the country was declared free of polio in 2014.
Known as the world’s pharmacy, India manufactures more than 60 percent of the vaccines sold worldwide. Based on these experiences, India had begun preparations for a nationwide deployment of vaccines since August, setting up an expert group to oversee the administration of COVID-19 vaccines. In December, the government published a detailed operational guideline that left nothing to chance, including the layout of vaccination centers and the specific role of each vaccinator.
During the pre-launch period, more than 100,000 vaccinators were trained with the help of countless simulated exercises, including three dry tests to identify problems.
“I think we’re ahead of most countries in terms of planning,” Jain told The Daily Beast. “I’m seeing the rest of the world and how vaccine deployment is being treated even in smaller populations, and I think we’re doing it brilliantly.”
India’s vaccine logistics network, according to this report, comprises 27,000 cold chain items, 76,000 cold chain equipment items, 700 refrigerated vans, 55,000 cold chain handlers and 2.5 million of health workers. But this network currently handles about 60 million people and will have to accelerate quickly to cover 1.35 billion people in the coming months.
“If you talk about scale, it’s not that huge yet, but it will be huge when we get into the second and third phase, beyond health and front-line workers,” Mukhopadhyay said. “And I’m afraid they could cost the arrest of routine vaccination services or other health activities.”
When the pandemic broke out in India, the government diverted all its sanitary force to focus on curbing the spread of the virus, which disrupted other health services and delivery, including existing vaccination programs.
The Indian government had anticipated this incidence from the first months of treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic and in a statement had said it had ordered states to make vaccines against COVID-19 four days a week “to minimize the disruption of the health services routine “.
But, Mukhopadhyay said, gradually the burden of vaccination will fall on health workers. “The pandemic exposed the limitations of our public health. We need to scale quickly to fill these critical gaps, ”he told The Daily Beast.
India is the country best placed to do so, all Modi has to do now is make sure Covaxin efficacy data is released while it still has time to convince around a billion people to rely on India’s own solution.