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.
The country 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 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. Recipients include 30 million doctors, nurses and other front-line workers, followed by 270 million others, who are over 50 or have diseases that make them vulnerable to COVID-19.
For workers who have taken India’s battered healthcare system through the pandemic, the traits offer confidence that life can return to normal. Many burst with pride.
“I’m excited to be among the first to get the vaccine,” said nurse Gita Devi, as she raised her left sleeve to receive the shot.
“I am happy to receive a vaccine made in India and 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.
The first dose was administered to a health worker at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in the capital of New Delhi, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi began 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, has taken the vaccine himself like other world leaders as an example of shot 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 the 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 and that some remote villages are completely disconnected.
On the first day, about 100 people will be vaccinated in each of the 3,006 centers across the country, the Ministry of Health said.
News cameras captured the rituals of an injection into hundreds of hospitals, and underscored the accumulated hopes that vaccination would be the first step in overcoming the pandemic that has devastated the lives of so many Indians and shaken the economy. country.
India nodded to make use of emergency of two vaccines, one developed by Oxford University and UK-based drug maker AstraZeneca, and another by Indian company Bharat Biotech on 4 January. Cargo planes flew 16.5 million shots in different Indian cities last week.
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.
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 increase in the overall number of deaths from COVID-19 (which exceeded 2 million on Friday), the clock is being reached by vaccinating 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 one dose of vaccine 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.
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 vaccine, money and logistical help.
As a result, the World Health Organization chief scientist warned that herd immunity (which would require at least 70% of the world to be vaccinated) is very unlikely to be achieved this year. As the disaster has shown, it is not enough to remove the virus in some places.
“Even if it happens in a couple of pockets, in some countries, it will not protect people around the world,” Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said this week.
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Associated Press writer Biswajeet Banerjee in Lucknow, India, contributed to this report.