Rebooting the vaccine plan
Tackle design issues; start immunising other frontline staff; and vaccinate a million per day
Ten days into its large-scale campaign to equip citizens against Covid-19, India completed two million vaccinations. The government has hailed it as the fastest at the outset for any country, a feat that was almost inevitable due to India’s unique position — it has the world’s largest pharma-manufacturing capacities and experience of immunising people at scale. It is no surprise then that the country inoculated close to 200,000 people on average over the last week — a threshold few have surpassed. But it is also crucial to remember that except for China, no other country has as many people as India does. In fact, the number of people on India’s priority list for vaccinations — 300 million — is close to the population of the United States, where experts have called for three million vaccinations a day to cover the entire country by July.
Within days of the launch, authorities across India encountered initial challenges. There were glitches in the digital platform to track the factory-toinjection process and there was an unexpectedly high level of hesitancy. The glitches were soon ironed out, and a massive awareness campaign to target vaccine sceptics was launched. But these have led to little improvement in daily vaccination rates. On average, across the country, roughly 55 people have turned up for every 100 invited for a vaccination session. Altogether, only 0.15 doses have been given per 100 people. And this challenge is going to become starker come February 13, when people who have received their first shots will need to be given their second doses.
To accelerate the campaign, India needs to take urgent steps soon. This newspaper had called for a million Covid-19 tests a day to tackle the pandemic — it is now time to aim for a million vaccinations every day, which will help touch 100 million people by April. The first step can be kickstarting immunisation of frontline workers such as police and sanitation staff now — a group of 20 million who are next on the priority list. They can also be catered to at pop-up centres or close to their workplaces, which will help expand visibility and possibly even help address some of the hesitancy. The pandemic may have abated in India, but that is exactly why this is the time to go full steam ahead with an ambitious logistical drive.