One billion doses, but it’s too little
The Modi government might be celebrating the completion of one billion COVID-19 vaccinations, but data says it’s too little to start celebrating. And the pace of vaccination required to achieve the target of inoculating all adults in the country by December 31 is getting steeper and steeper.
Yesterday, India crossed the one-billion mark (or 100 crore) in COVID-19 vaccination. The Health Ministry released a ‘vaccine anthem’, a three-minute folk song by singer-composer Kailash Kher. “India scripts history,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted. Industry chambers like ASSOCHAM and FICCI followed suit. Which is all very good.
But then comes the question: Now what? There are serious issues which beg examination.
One is the vaccination target. As The Telegraph pointed out, the number of vaccinations needed per day to complete the target of vaccinating India’s adult population by December 31—a target repeatedly stressed by the government—keeps on rising.
From 8.9 million per day on July 20, it has climbed every month to more than 12 million per day now. Health experts say the current pace, that is, in October, of less than six million doses per day on average is not enough to achieve the goal.
The lack of adequate supply of vaccines for a population as large as India’s is an issue here, though denied by the government time and again.
The Health Ministry had, in June, projected an anticipated availability of 1,350 million vaccine doses—500 million Covishield, 400 million Covaxin, 100 million Sputnik, 50 million doses of a Zydus Cadila vaccine and 300 million doses of a vaccine from Bio E.
But even until mid-October, the campaign remained almost entirely dependent on Covishield and Covaxin. Among the doses administered until Wednesday evening, Sputnik V accounted for only around 1 million. The ministry is yet to introduce the Zydus Cadila vaccine while Bio E’s vaccine is yet to be approved.
The country’s largest body of doctors, Indian Medical Association, though expressing delight at the feat of achieving one billion vaccinations, added that “we are yet miles and miles away to go, before we stand firm to say all our needed population are vaccinated”.
Only about 41 per cent (87 million) of India’s estimated population aged between 45-59 years (210 million people) and about 43 per cent (62 million) of the estimated people aged 60 years or older (143 million ) had been fully vaccinated till October 20, according to official immunisation data.
So far, India has fully vaccinated (two doses) just about 30 per cent of its adult population (18+ years) and given one dose to about 74 per cent, according to the Ministry of Health.
India needs 1,888 million doses to inoculate all its estimated 944 million adults with the two doses required for full vaccination.
But even as India races to fully vaccinate its adult population, the country is opening up and exporting millions of vaccine doses.
Last Friday, the first foreign tourists arrived in the country after an almost 18-month pause, and millions within the country are travelling to celebrate various festivals.
If India’s vaccination process takes too long, some fear that it might just be that the novel coronavirus gets enough time to mutate to form another more lethal variant than the Delta, which originated in India and is causing havoc worldwide. And then, the vaccination process might have to be begun all over again.
