15-day ‘lockdown style’ curfew in Maharashtra
INDIA SEEKS VACCINE IMPORTS FOR FAST-TRACK APPROVAL
India’s richest state, Maharashtra, will be under ‘lockdown style’ curfew from tonight for 15 days to slow rising coronavirus infections, its chief minister Uddhav Thackeray said yesterday.
Maharashtra, home to India’s financial capital Mumbai and the country’s most industrial state, has been the country’s worst hit state, accounting for about a quarter of its 13.85 million cases.
Having let its guard down with mass religious festivals, political rallies and spectators at cricket matches, India is experiencing a ferocious new wave with around a million new cases in the past week.
The new restrictions will force all “non-essential” shops, malls and e-commerce deliveries to pause operations.
Shooting for movies, television shows and advertisements in Bollywood will also grind to a halt, in what will be a blow to India’s flagship film industry.
‘Lives are more important than livelihoods’
The new measures follow Maharashtra’s move to impose a state-wide weekend lockdown that confined the state’s 125 million people to their homes until the end of April unless shopping for food or medicine, or travelling. Acknowledging the toll that tighter restrictions will take on the economy and jobs, Thackeray urged residents to follow the new rules, adding: “Lives are more important than livelihoods”. The state is also struggling with oxygen shortages, Thackeray said, asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to deploy the air force and send fresh supplies.
India invites Pfizer, Moderna
Meanwhile, India said it will fast-track emergency approvals for Covid-19 vaccines authorised by Western countries and Japan, paving the way for possible imports of Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna shots.
India has the biggest global vaccine manufacturing capacity and had exported tens of millions of doses before its own demand skyrocketed and led to a shortage in some states. The health ministry said vaccines authorised by the WHO or authorities in the US, Europe, Britain and Japan could be granted emergency use approval in India. “If any of these regulators have approved a vaccine, the vaccine is now ready to be brought into the country for use, manufacture and fill-andfinish,” Vinod Kumar Paul, a senior health official, said.
“We hope and we invite the vaccine makers such as Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and others ... to be ready to come to India as early as possible.” Pfizer said it would work towards bringing its vaccine to India after withdrawing its application in February.
The Indian city of Pune is running out of ventilators as gasping coronavirus patients crowd its hospitals. Social media is full of people searching for beds, while relatives throng pharmacies looking for antiviral medicines that hospitals ran out of long ago.
The surge is particularly alarming because the country is a major vaccine producer and a critical supplier to the UNbacked Covax initiative. That program aims to bring shots to some of the world’s poorest countries. Already the rise in cases has forced India to focus on satisfying its domestic demand — and delay deliveries to Covax and elsewhere.
India’s decision “means there is very little, if anything, left for Covax and everybody else,” said Brook Baker, a vaccines expert at Northeastern University.
Complacency costs dear
Pune is India’s hardesthit city, but other major metropolises are also in crisis, as daily new infections hit record levels, and experts say that missteps stemming from the belief that the pandemic was “over’’ are coming back to haunt the country.
When infections began plummeting in India in September, many concluded the worst had passed. Masks and social distancing were abandoned, while the government gave mixed signals about the level of risk. When cases began rising again in February, authorities were left scrambling.
“Nobody took a long-term view of the pandemic,” said Dr. Vineeta Bal, who studies immune systems at the city’s Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.
Over the past week, India had averaged more than 130,000 cases per day. It has now reported 13.5 million virus cases since the pandemic began — pushing its toll past Brazil’s and making it second only to the United States’, though both countries have much smaller populations. Deaths are also rising and have crossed the 170,000 mark. Even those figures, experts say, are likely an undercount.
Nearly all states are showing an uptick in infections, and Pune — home to four million people — is now left with just 28 unused ventilators on Monday night for its more than 110,000 Covid-19 patients.
The country now faces the mammoth challenge of vaccinating millions of people, while also contact-tracing the tens of thousands getting infected every day and keeping the health system from collapsing.
Compounding concerns about rising cases is the fact that the country’s vaccination drive could also be headed for trouble: Several Indian states have reported a shortage of doses even as the federal government has insisted there’s enough in stock.
After a sluggish start, India recently overtook the United States in the number of shots it’s giving every day and is now averaging 3.6 million. But with more than four times the number of people and that later start, it has given at least one dose to around just seven per cent of its population.
Maharashtra state, home to Pune and financial capital Mumbai, has recorded nearly half of the country’s new infections in the past week. Some vaccination centres in the state turned away people due to shortages.
Dwindling stocks
At least half a dozen Indian states are reporting low stocks, but health minister Harsh Vardhan has called these concerns “deplorable attempts by some state governments to distract attention from their failures.’’
Worries about vaccine supplies have led to criticism of prime minister Narendra Modi’s government, which has exported 64.5 million doses to other nations. Rahul Gandhi, the face of the main opposition Congress party, asked Modi in
a letter whether the government’s export strategy was “an effort to garner publicity at the cost of our own citizens.”
Was the export of vaccines also an ‘oversight’, like many other decisions, or an effort to garner publicity at the cost of our own citizens,”
Rahul Gandhi | Congress leader
Reversed course
Now, India has reversed course. Last month, Covax said shipments of up to 90 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines were delayed because the Serum Institute of India decided to prioritise domestic needs.
The institute, which is based in Pune and is the world’s largest vaccine maker, told AP earlier this month that it could restart exports of the vaccine by June — if new coronavirus infections subside. But a continued surge could result in more delays.
Experts, meanwhile, say the current limit of offering vaccine to those over 45 should be relaxed and that shots need to be targeted in areas experiencing surges.