{"id":411,"date":"2021-05-03T06:20:07","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T06:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/?p=411"},"modified":"2024-08-12T17:07:27","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T11:37:27","slug":"covid-19-vaccination-drive-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/covid-19-vaccination-drive-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 VACCINATION DRIVE IN INDIA"},"content":{"rendered":"

India\u00a0began inoculation of\u00a0COVID-19 vaccines<\/strong>\u00a0on 16 January 2021. As of 29\u00a0April\u00a02021, India has overseen\u00a0152,245,179<\/strong>\u00a0doses overall, including first and second dose of the currently-authorized vaccines.<\/p>\n

Two vaccines received approval for emergency use in India at the beginning of the program, including Covishield (a version of the\u00a0Oxford\u2013AstraZeneca vaccine\u00a0produced by the\u00a0Serum Institute of India), and\u00a0Covaxin\u00a0(developed by\u00a0Bharat Biotech). In April 2021,\u00a0Sputnik V\u00a0was sanctioned as a third vaccine, with distribution expected to begin by late-May 2021.<\/p>\n

Vaccination Timeline So Far:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In September 2020, India’s science minister\u00a0Harsh Vardhan\u00a0stated that the country intended to sanction and begin circulation of a vaccine by the first quarter of 2021.\u00a0The first recipients were to be 30 million health workers directly dealing with COVID patients.<\/p>\n

On 1 January 2021, the\u00a0Drug Controller General of India\u00a0(DCGI) approved emergency usage of the\u00a0Oxford\u2013AstraZeneca vaccine, which was being manufactured by the\u00a0Serum Institute of India\u00a0(SII) under the trade name “Covishield”. On 2 January, the DCGI approved\u00a0Bharat Biotech’s\u00a0Covaxin\u00a0for emergency use, even though it had not yet completed phase 3 trials.<\/p>\n

India began its vaccination program on 16 January 2021, with 3,006 operational vaccination centres on the onset. Each vaccination centre offered either Covishield or Covaxin, but not both. Some states had thought to primarily use Covishield, and reserve their Covaxin doses as a \u201cbuffer provision\u201d. Since Covaxin had not finished phase-3 trials, those receiving it were needed to sign a consent form.<\/p>\n

165,714 people were vaccinated on the first day of accessibility. Complications in uploading beneficiary lists at some sites caused interruptions.\u00a0In the first three days, 631,417 people were vaccinated. Of these, 0.18% reported side-effects and nine people (0.002%) were admitted to hospitals for surveillance and treatment. Within those first days, there was worries about low attendance, due to an amalgamation of vaccine safety concerns, technical issues with the software used, and misinformation.<\/p>\n

The first phase of the vaccine drive involved health workers and frontline workers comprising police, paramilitary forces, sanitation workers, and disaster management volunteers.\u00a0By 1 March, only 14 million healthcare and frontline workers had been inoculated, falling deficient of the intended goal of 30 million.<\/p>\n

The following phase of the vaccine drive encompassed all residents over the age of 60, residents between the ages of 45 and 60 with one or more eligible\u00a0comorbidities, and any health care or vanguard worker that did not get a dose during the previous phase. Online registration began on 1 March via the\u00a0Aarogya Setu\u00a0app and a web-based appointment system.\u00a0From 1 April, eligibility was spread out to all residents over the age of 45.<\/p>\n

On 12 April, the DCGI sanctioned Russia’s\u00a0Sputnik V\u00a0vaccine for emergency use in India. A phase 3 trial had been conducted in the country in September 2020, which showed 91.6% efficacy. The local supplier\u00a0Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories\u00a0specified that it intended to have the vaccine accessible in India by late-May 2021.<\/p>\n

On 19 April, it was declared that the next phase of the vaccine drive will begin on 1 May, encompassing eligibility to all citizens over the age of 18.\u00a0On 25 April, India became the fastest country to oversee 140 million doses.<\/p>\n

On 28 April 2021, the Government of India started registrations from age groups 18 and above. Nearly 1.33 crore (13.3 million) people registered in a single day for the shot on the CoWIN website.<\/p>\n

When India began its Covid-19 vaccination initiative in January, the likelihoods of success looked high: It could manufacture more vaccines than any country in the world and had many long years of practise vaccinating pregnant women and babies in rural areas.<\/p>\n

While the inoculation plans of countries around the world took a beating, life in India was going on pretty much as regular. Millions of pilgrims took a dip in the holy Ganges River in the Hindu religious festival Kumbh Mela, while political parties organized pompous rallies in five state elections.<\/p>\n

India on 22nd<\/sup> April, Thursday broke the global record of most Covid infections in a single day after recording a massive increase of nearly 3.15 lakh new cases along with 2,102 deaths in the past 24 hours. The torrent of infections has led to a severe health crisis in the country with PM Modi saying lately that the second wave has hit India “like a storm”. What has been chiefly upsetting during the ongoing Covid surge is the rapid speed at which India is accumulating new infections.<\/p>\n

It has taken just 17 days for the daily case tally to rise from 1 lakh on April 4 to over 3 lakh on Wednesday. During this period, cases have risen at 6.76% daily, more than four times quicker than a similar progression in daily numbers in the US \u2014 the only other country that has registered more than 1 lakh cases in a day.<\/p>\n

Future Challenges of Upcoming Phases:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On May 1, as the country opens up its vaccination drive to everyone above the age of 18 years, 600 million additional people will become qualified. This could lead to another predicament as another 40 million will already be waiting in the backlog for the second dose. And that number will increase with every passing day, as the 65 million people above the age of 45 \u2014 who got their first dose after April 1 \u2014 finish their specified time of four to eight weeks and add to the line for the second dose. If they don\u2019t get vaccinated timely, they will have to start the vaccination cycle from scratch. All in all, the government should come out with required strategies to ensure no one is left behind, and not one treasurable dose goes to waste \u2014 especially since India has previously wasted 4.6 million doses till April 11. This has become obvious from the response to the initiation of online booking of vaccination slots. The government started registrations for people between the ages of 18 to 44 on April 28. And, before things could even stabilise, registration was hindered from midnight to 4:00 pm.<\/p>\n

According to the government, more than 3.5 million people registered within the first hour of the introduction. But when it came to being able to reserve an appointment, they passed the responsibility onto state governments and private vaccination centers. When the floodgates broke, the CoWIN app, Aarogya Setu app and UMANG app\u2019s servers went haywire. Many of those who got the opportunity to register via the CoWIN website,\u00a0never got a vacant slot.<\/p>\n

Even if the government were to take no fresh bookings, and only emphasize on those needing second shots at all centres, at the present speed of vaccination, it would take 48 days to just go through that percentage. In such a situation, it is not unthinkable that those who require the second shot never get the slot before their 12-week limit. This would not have been a cause of alarm if India had sufficient vaccines to go around for everyone who requires it. However, that\u2019s not the case because the government lagged behind in enlisting the orders.<\/p>\n

On April 23, the government vowed to upsurge the monthly manufacturing of doses to around 100 million doses by September with the rate of vaccination slowing down amid growing cases.<\/p>\n

Having to repeat the first doses for even one person is a misuse of valuable resources. Dealing with a pandemic was never going to be easy but conceptualizing scenarios and preparing for the risks is the only approach to keep things from spiralling out of hand.<\/p>\n

Source: Wikipedia<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

India\u00a0began inoculation of\u00a0COVID-19 vaccines\u00a0on 16 January 2021. As of 29\u00a0April\u00a02021, India has overseen\u00a0152,245,179\u00a0doses overall, including first and second dose of the currently-authorized vaccines. Two vaccines received approval for emergency use in India at the beginning of the program, including Covishield (a version of the\u00a0Oxford\u2013AstraZeneca vaccine\u00a0produced by the\u00a0Serum Institute of India), and\u00a0Covaxin\u00a0(developed by\u00a0Bharat Biotech). In April […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":412,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[188,187,185,186],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":978,"href":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions\/978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aihms.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}