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NEW DELHI (AP) – India on Saturday began vaccinating health workers in what is arguably the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccination campaign, joining the ranks of wealthier countries where the effort is already well underway.
The country is home to the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers and has one of the largest vaccination programs. But there is no playbook for the enormity of the challenge.
Indian authorities are hoping to shoot 300 million people, roughly the population of the United States and several times more than its existing program that targets 26 million infants. Beneficiaries include 30 million doctors, nurses and other frontline workers, followed by 270 million others, over the age of 50 or suffering from illnesses that make them vulnerable to COVID-19.
For the workers who pulled India’s abused healthcare system through the pandemic, the gunfire gave them confidence that life can return to its normal course. Many are bursting with pride.
“I am delighted to be among the first to receive the vaccine,” said nurse Gita Devi, as she lifted her left sleeve to receive the vaccine.
“I’m happy to get a vaccine made in India and we don’t have to depend on others for it,” said Devi, who has treated patients throughout the pandemic at a hospital in Lucknow, the capital of the heart state of Uttar Pradesh.
The first dose was given to a health worker at the Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in the capital, New Delhi, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the campaign with a nationwide televised speech.
“We are launching the largest vaccination campaign in the world and it shows the world our capacity,” Modi said. He implored citizens to remain vigilant and not to believe any “vaccine safety rumors”.
It was not clear whether Modi, 70, had taken the vaccine himself like other world leaders as an example of shooting safety. His government said politicians would not be seen as priority groups in the first phase of the 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 largest such project in the world.
The pure ladder has its obstacles. For example, India plans to rely heavily on a digital platform to track vaccine shipping and delivery. But public health experts point out that the internet remains spotty in large parts of the country, and some remote villages are totally disconnected.
About 100 people will be vaccinated at each of 3,006 centers across the country on the first day, the health ministry said.
Television cameras captured rituals of an injection in hundreds of hospitals, underscoring pent-up hopes that vaccination was the first step in overcoming the pandemic that has devastated the lives of so many Indians and ravaged the country’s economy. country.
India nodded for emergency use of two vaccines, one developed by the University of Oxford and UK drugmaker AstraZeneca, and another by Indian company Bharat Biotech, on Jan.4. Cargo planes flew 16.5 million shots to various Indian cities last week.
Health experts fear that the regulatory shortcut taken to approve the Bharat Biotech vaccine without waiting for concrete data showing its effectiveness in preventing coronavirus disease could amplify the reluctance to vaccinate. At least one state health minister has opposed its use.
India’s health ministry has bristled at criticism and says vaccines are safe, but maintains that health workers will have no choice but to decide which vaccine they get themselves.
Such an approach was concerning as he said regulatory approval was rushed and not backed by science, said Dr SP Kalantri, director of a rural hospital in Maharashtra, India’s worst-hit state.
“Pressed to be populist, the government (is making) decisions that may not be in the best interests of ordinary people,” Kalantri said.
Against the backdrop of the rising death toll around the world from COVID-19 – it topped 2 million on Friday – time is running out to vaccinate as many people as possible. But the campaign has been uneven.
In wealthy countries like the United States, Britain, Israel, Canada, and Germany, millions of citizens have already enjoyed some protection with at least one dose of vaccine developed at a revolutionary rate and rapidly. allowed to be used.
But elsewhere, vaccination campaigns have barely started. Many experts predict another year of loss and hardship in countries like Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for around a quarter of deaths globally.
India is second after the United States with 10.5 million confirmed cases, and third in number of deaths, behind the United States and Brazil, with 152,000.
More than 35 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide, according to the University of Oxford.
While the majority of COVID-19 vaccine doses have already been purchased by wealthy countries, COVAX, a UN-backed project to provide vaccines to developing regions of the world, found itself running out of vaccines, d money and logistical assistance.
As a result, the chief scientist of the World Health Organization has warned that it is highly unlikely that herd immunity – which would require at least 70% of the planet to be vaccinated – will be achieved this year. As the disaster demonstrated, it is not enough to just switch off the virus in some places.
“Even if it happens in a few pockets, in a few countries, it won’t protect people across the world,” Dr Soumya Swaminathan said this week.
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Associated Press writer Biswajeet Banerjee of Lucknow, India contributed to this report.
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