NEW DELHI (AP) – India began inoculating health workers on Saturday in what is probably the largest COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the world, joining the ranks of the richest countries where the effort is already let’s go.
India is home to the largest vaccine manufacturers in the world and has one of the largest vaccination programs. But there is no playbook for the enormity of the current challenge.
Indian authorities expect to shoot 300 million people, roughly the US population and several times more than the existing program targeting 26 million babies. Among the recipients are 30 million doctors, nurses and other front-line workers, followed by 270 million people over the age of 50 or with diseases that make them vulnerable to COVID-19.
For workers who have achieved India’s battered healthcare system through the pandemic, the traits offer confidence that life can begin to return to normal. Many burst with pride.
“I’m excited to be among the first to get the vaccine,” Gita Devi, a nurse, said as she raised her left sleeve to receive the shot.
“I am pleased to receive a vaccine made in India and that we should not depend on others,” said Devi, who has treated patients throughout the pandemic at a hospital in Lucknow, the state capital of Uttar Pradesh, in central India. .
The first dose was administered to a sanitation worker at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in the capital. New Delhi, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the campaign with a nationally televised speech.
“We are launching the world’s largest vaccination campaign and it shows the world our ability,” Modi said. He implored citizens to remain alert and not believe “vaccine safety rumors.”
It was unclear whether Modi, 70, had taken the vaccine himself like other world leaders as an example of gun safety. His government has said politicians will not be considered priority groups in the first phase of deployment.
Health officials have not specified what percentage of India’s nearly 1.4 billion people will be targeted by the campaign. But experts say it will almost certainly be the biggest boost of its kind globally.
The large scale has its obstacles. For example, India plans to rely heavily on a digital platform to track the shipment and delivery of vaccines. But public health experts point out that the Internet remains uneven in much of the country, with some remote villages completely disconnected.
On the first day, about 100 people were to be vaccinated in each of the 3,006 centers across the country, according to the Ministry of Health.
News cameras captured the injections at hundreds of hospitals, underscoring the accumulated hopes that vaccination was the first step in overcoming the pandemic that has devastated the lives of so many Indians and shaken the country’s economy.
On January 4, India approved the use of emergency of two vaccines, one developed by Oxford University and UK-based drug manufacturer AstraZeneca, and another by Indian company Bharat Biotech. Last week cargo planes flew 16.5 million shots in different Indian cities.
But doubts about the effectiveness of the native vaccine are creating obstacles to the ambitious plan.
Health experts are concerned that the regulatory shortcut adopted to approve the Bharat Biotech vaccine without waiting for concrete data to demonstrate its effectiveness in preventing coronavirus disease could increase vaccine hesitation. At least one state health minister has opposed its use.
In New Delhi, doctors at 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 hospital doctors’ union said many of its members were “somewhat concerned about the lack of a full trial” for the self-produced vaccine.
“Right now, we don’t have the option to choose between vaccines,” said Dr. Nirmalaya Mohapatra, vice president of the hospital’s Resident Physicians Association.
The Indian Ministry of Health has rejected the criticism and says the vaccines are safe, but argues that health professionals will have no choice when deciding which vaccine to make themselves.
According to Dr SP Kalantri, director of a rural hospital in Maharashtra, India’s most affected state, this approach was worrisome because he said regulatory approval was rushed and not backed by science.
“In the rush to be populist, the government (is) making decisions that might not be in the best interest of the common man,” Kalantri said.
In the context of the rising death toll from COVID-19 (which topped 2 million on Friday), the clock is ticking to vaccinate as many people as possible. But the campaign has been uneven.
In rich countries such as the United States, Britain, Israel, Canada and Germany, millions of citizens have already received some protection with at least a dose of vaccines developed with a revolutionary revolution and quickly authorized for use.
But elsewhere, vaccination actions have barely begun. Many experts predict another year of losses and hardship in places like Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for about a quarter of the world’s deaths from COVID-19.
India ranks second in the United States with 10.5 million confirmed cases and ranks third in number of deaths, behind the United States and Brazil, with 152,000.
According to Oxford University, more than 35 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide.
Although most doses of COVID-19 vaccine have already been caught by rich countries, COVAX, a UN-backed project to supply shots to developing parts of the world, has been in short supply of vaccines, money and logistical help.
As a result, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, warned this week that herd immunity (which would require at least 70% of the world’s population) is very unlikely. to be vaccinated).
“Even if it happens in a couple of pockets, in some countries, it won’t protect people around the world,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Biswajeet Banerjee in Lucknow, India, contributed to this report.