NEW DELHI (AP) – India is expanding its coronavirus vaccine beyond healthcare and front-line workers, offering vaccines to the elderly and those with medical conditions that put them at risk. Among the first to receive a vaccine on Monday was Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Those who are now eligible include anyone over the age of 60, as well as those over the age of 45 who have illnesses such as heart disease or diabetes that make them vulnerable to severe COVID-19 disease. The shots will be given free to government hospitals and will also be sold to more than 10,000 private hospitals at a fixed price of 250 rupees, or $ 3.40, per shot.
But the deployment of one of the largest vaccination mechanisms in the world it has been slow. Amid signs of hesitation among the first groups to offer the vaccine, 70-year-old Modi was shot at the All India Institute of Medical Science in New Delhi. He received the vaccine produced by Indian vaccine manufacturer Bharat Biotech, which has had particular skepticism. He appealed for everyone’s vaccination, and then tweeted, “Together, let’s leave India COVID-19 free!”
The boost, which began in January in the country of 1.4 billion people, has recently acquired even more urgency as new infections have begun to rise again after months of steady decline and scientists have detected worrying variants of the virus. who fear they may speed up infections or make vaccines or treatments less useful.
On Monday morning they started queuing on the edge of private hospitals. Sunita Kapoor was among them, waiting for a vaccine with her husband. He said they had been staying at home for months and not meeting people to protect themselves from the virus and wishing they could socialize a little more. “We’re excited,” Kapoor, 63, said.
Many said they had struggled with the online system to register and then waited hours in line before receiving the vaccine, problems that other countries have also experienced.
Dr. Giridhar R. Babu, who studies epidemics at the Public Health Foundation of India, said long waits for the elderly were worrying as they could detect infections, including COVID-19, in hospitals. “The unwanted effect may be that they get COVID when they are going to get the vaccine,” he said.
While India is home to the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers and has one of the largest vaccination programs, things have not gone as planned. Of the 10 million health workers the government had initially wanted to vaccinate, only 6.6 million got the first shot of the two-dose vaccines and 2.4 million got both. Of its estimated 20 million front-line workers, such as police or sanitation workers, only 5.1 million have been vaccinated so far.
Dr Gagangdeep Kang, an infectious disease expert at Christian Medical College Vellore in southern India, said the hesitation of health workers highlights the little information available about vaccines. If health workers are reluctant, “do you seriously believe that the general public will go for the vaccine?” she said.
Vaccinating more people quickly is one of India’s top priorities, especially now that infections are on the rise again. The country has recorded more than 11 million cases, the second largest in the world behind the United States, and more than 157,000 deaths. The government had set a goal to immunize 300 million people, nearly the entire U.S. population, in August.
The rise in infections in India is most pronounced in eastern Maharashtra, in the west, where the number of active cases has almost doubled to over 68,000 in the last two weeks. Closures and other restrictions have been re-imposed in some areas and the chief minister, Uddhav Thackeray, has warned that another wave of cases is “knocking on our door”.
Similar state growths have been reported from all corners of the massive country: Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir in the north, Gujarat in the west, West Bengal in the east, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in central India and Telangana to the south.
Senior federal officials have called on the authorities in these states to increase the rate of vaccinations in the districts where cases are increasing and to monitor infection groups and control variants.
“There is a sense of urgency because of the mutants and because the cases are increasing,” said Dr. K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India.
He said the steady drop in cases for months resulted in a “perceived threat of the threat,” which led to hesitation. “The momentum for (vaccination) started when the perception was that the worst was over, so people were more hesitant,” Reddy said.
Others have also noted that reluctance to vaccinate was amplified, at least in part, by opaque government decision-making. while the vaccines are green.
But experts say allowing private hospitals to manage the shots (which began with this new phase of the campaign) should improve access. India’s healthcare system is erratic and in many small towns people depend on private hospitals for their medical needs.
Still, problems remain. India had launched online software to track shots and recipients, but the system was prone to problems and delays.
The federal government will decide which hospitals will get which vaccine and people will not be able to choose between the AstraZeneca vaccine or the Bharat Biotech vaccine, confirmed Dr. Amar Fettle, nodal officer of COVID-19 for eastern South India. Kerala. The latter obtained the approval of Indian regulators in January before tests were completed to test the effectiveness of the shot to prevent disease..
But opening the campaign to private hospitals may allow the rich to “buy” sites that offer the AstraZeneca vaccine, an option that poorer people would not have, said Dr. Anant Bhan, who studies medical ethics.
Now India hopes to rapidly increase vaccinations. But the country is likely to continue to see drinking troughs and peaks in infections, and the key lesson is that the pandemic will not end until enough people have been vaccinated to slow the spread of the virus, said Jishnu Das, a health economist at Georgetown University advising the state of West Bengal on the virus response.
“Don’t use a watering can to declare success and say it’s over,” he said.
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Associated Press journalists Krutika Pathi and Rishabh Jain contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.