CASES IN India soar as vaccines run low.
BENGALURU, India — Since India opened vaccinations to all adults this month, hoping to tame a disastrous coronavirus surge sweeping across the country, the pace of administering the shots has dropped, with states saying they have only limited stock to give out.
Meanwhile, cases are still rising at a record pace in the world’s second-most-populous nation. Alongside a slowdown in vaccinations, states have gone to court over oxygen shortages as hospitals struggle to treat a running line of covid-19 patients.
On Sunday, India reported 403,738 confirmed cases, including 4,092 deaths. Overall, India has more than 22 million confirmed infections and 240,000 deaths. Experts say both figures are undercounts.
India’s Supreme Court said Saturday it would set up a national task force of top experts and doctors to conduct an “oxygen audit” to determine whether supplies from the federal government were reaching states.
Complaints of oxygen shortages have dominated the court recently, which stepped in last week to make sure the federal government provided more medical oxygen to hospitals in the capital, New Delhi.
The country’s massive vaccination drive kicked off sluggishly in January when cases were low and exports of vaccines were high, with 64 million doses going overseas. But as infections started to rise in March and April, India’s exports drastically slowed down so doses went to its own population. So far, around 10% of India’s population have received one shot, while just under 2.5% have gotten both.
At its peak in early April, India was administering a record high of 3.5 million shots a day on average. But this number has consistently shrunk, reaching an average of 1.3 million shots a day over the past week. Between April 6 and May 6, daily doses have dropped by 38%, even as cases have tripled and deaths have jumped sixfold, according to Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan.
One reason for the drop in shots is that there are just not enough available, experts say. India’s two vaccine makers produce an estimated 70 million doses each month of two approved shots — AstraZeneca, made by the Serum Institute of India, and another by Bharat Biotech.
Vaccine supply has remained nearly the same since the drive began in January, but the target population eligible has increased by threefold, said Chandrakant Lahariya, a health policy expert.
Experts also point to a policy change by the government that has upended how doses are being distributed.
Previously, all of the stock was bought by the federal government and then administered to the population through both public and private health facilities.
But since May 1, all available stock has been divided in two, with 50% purchased by the government going to public health centers to inoculate those older than 45. The other half is being purchased by states and the private sector directly from manufacturers at set prices to give to adults younger than 45.
This has led to lags as states and private hospitals, still adjusting to the new rules, struggle to procure supplies on their own.
“You have now taken it out of a fairly efficient system where every dose was still centrally controlled,” said Jacob John, a professor of community medicine at Christian Medical College, Vellore. “But with market forces at play and unprepared states burdened with such a daunting task, the efficiency of the system has fallen.”
Meanwhile, Dubai’s longhaul carrier Emirates will begin shipping aid from the World Health Organization and other groups into India for free to help fight the crushing outbreak there, the airline said Sunday.
The offer by Emirates, which has some 95 flights weekly to nine cities in India, initially involves aid already in Dubai but may expand across the carrier’s network. That could mean major savings for aid groups, as airfreight costs have skyrocketed during the pandemic. Demand for flown cargo stands at record levels worldwide.