Herd immunity can’t be a choice in India: Centre
NEW DELHI: The herd immunity level is “far away” for the Indian population and it can only be achieved through immunisation by vaccines, a top health ministry official said on Thursday and added that reaching this threshold – believed to be crucial for the Covid-19 outbreak to end – in any other manner will exact too high a cost.
The official also hinted that India is looking at a multilateral, Who-led mechanism to secure Covid vaccines and the country is yet to begin direct discussions with any of the developers that are leading the development race.
“For a large country like India, herd immunity cannot be a strategic choice or a strategic option... It will come at too high a cost and can be done only through immunisations via vaccination,” said Rajesh Bhushan, the officer on special duty, health ministry, during a briefing on Thursday.
The march of an infectious disease such as Covid-19 can be halted only when there is a large enough proportion of the population that is immune to it – a threshold known as herd immunity. Besides a vaccine, which is yet to be approved, the only way people become immune is if they have had the disease and recovered.
“Government has not signed an agreement with any vaccine manufacturing company. There are multiple stakeholders within and outside government and ministry of health has started actively engaging with such stakeholders. It’s too premature to comment on supply and distribution of vaccine at this stage but whenever it comes it has to be deployed on a much larger scale than the existing vaccines,” said Bhushan.
Bhushan also said the question on who would get the vaccine first was still under deliberation at the health ministry.
World over, there are roughly 25 vaccines in human trial phases – including two from India. Three vaccine candidates – one each from US, UK and China – are largely regarded as the frontrunners since they are now at advanced stages of experiments among people.
Several countries have entered into commercial deals with the UK candidate’s developer Astrazeneca and the US candidate’s Moderna.
“India is in touch with global multilateral organisations such as GAVI, CEPI, WHO etc. to see how it can be made accessible for people in India,” said Bhushan. GAVI (Gavi-the Vaccine Alliance) and CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) have partnered with WHO and several of the vaccine developers to help pool resources for the production, acquisition of distribution of any potential Covid-19 vaccine, with fair access being one of the factors that they will keep in mind.
The two Indian vaccine candidates are Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin and Zydus Cadila’s Zycov-d, both in phase I/II human trials for determining its safety and dosage.
About 141 vaccine candidates globally are in the pre-clinical stage, which means these are into research stages or in preclinical trials where animal experiments are taking place to generate toxicity data.
OFFICIAL HINTS THAT INDIA IS LOOKING AT A MULTILATERAL, WHO-LED MECHANISM TO SECURE COVID-19 VACCINES
JOHNS HOPKINS CORONAVIRUS TRACKER PUT THE NATION’S CONFIRMED INFECTIONS AT NEARLY 4.4 MILLION, ALSO THE HIGHEST IN THE WORLD
WASHINGTON/BEIJING:THE death toll from Covid-19 in the US crossed 150,000 on Wednesday, the highest in the world, according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
The bleak milestone comes amid signs that the nation’s outbreak is beginning to stabilise in the Sun Belt but heating up in the Midwest, fuelled largely by young adults who are hitting bars, restaurants and gyms again. The Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker put the nation’s confirmed infections at nearly 4.4 million, also the highest in the world. The current surge in the number of people infected and killed by the disease has been accompanied by a burgeoning outbreak of misinformation and conspiracy theories about supposed cures and the effectiveness of masks.
‘EARLY CASES LINKED TO CHINA, ITALY, IRAN’
People with travel links to China, Iran, and Italy accounted for nearly two-thirds of the initial cases outside mainland China in the pre-pandemic period between December 31, 2019 and March 10 this year, a study published in the medical journal Lancet says.
The study says one in four of the first cases originated in Italy, and one in five in China. It also found four large clusters and outbreaks triggered in different countries to be linked with “transmission in faith-based settings”. scientists have been researching how the coronavirus rapidly spread outside China since March when the World Health Organization declared the disease a pandemic. Meanwhile, the Emmy Awards show, slated for this September, may go virtual due to the pandemic, with celebrities having to appear online.