Modi reviews preparations for large-scale vaccination exercise
nNEWDELHI:A day after India’s first Covid-19 vaccine candidate received the central drugs controller’s approval for human clinical trials, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday reviewed India’s preparations for vaccinating its population against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) once a vaccine becomes available.
Vaccination must be affordable and universal, Modi said. At a high-level meeting, he directed officials to start work on a detailed plan for carrying out such large exercise in the country of 1.3 billion people and review preparations in place for vaccination against the viral disease that has infected at least 10 million and killed 508,876 across the globe. In India, the disease has infected 566,840 people and caused 16,893 deaths.
On Monday, Bharat Biotech said it had received the drug controller’s approval for carrying out human trials on a vaccine it developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune. The trials are expected to begin in July, the company said.
ICMR-NIV researchers managed to isolate and culture 11 strains from swab samples in early February from initial Covid-19 patients in Kerala that could be used to develop vaccines and aid research.
Vaccination of India’s vast and diverse population will need to factor in issues including those related to management of medical supply chains, prioritisation of at-risk populations, coordination between different agencies involved in the process, as well as the role of private sector and civil society, a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said.
The government has allocated ₹100 crores from the PM-CARES (Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations) Fund to support the initiative to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus disease. There are as many as 25 vaccine development initiatives underway in India, across academic institutions, industry, and start-ups, according to the department of biotechnology, one of the agencies spearheading the research on Covid-19 management.
The PM focused on four guiding principles that will form the foundation of this national effort: such as vulnerable groups should be identified and prioritised for early vaccination; vaccination of anyone anywhere should take place without imposition of any domicile-related restrictions; must be affordable and universal; no person should be left behind; and the entire process from production to vaccination should be monitored and supported in real time with the use of technology.
Globally, there are 13 experimental vaccines in clinical trials and another 129 in the preclinical evaluation stage, according to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) draft landscape of Covid-19 vaccines.
nKOLKATA: Days after the nationwide lockdown was announced, sex workers at Sonagachi, Asia’s biggest red-light area located in Kolkata, realised that the empty lanes in their neighbourhood meant no wages and spelt doom for those who were retired had physical disabilities.
Around 8000 sex workers live and work in Sonagachi and the adjoining bylanes of Sethbagan and Rambagan in North Kolkata, and for the duration of the lockdown — which began on March 25 and continued till June 15 — their work, and ability to earn, came to a grinding halt.
In another part of the 300-yearold city, Dipali Bhattacharya, a retired principal of the Government College of Art and Craft, her friend Aditi Roy Ghatak, a veteran journalist and activist, and other friends understood the implications of the lockdown on vulnerable groups who depend on a daily income to feed themselves and their families.
What followed, they said, was an experience of a lifetime, despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
Over the past two months, the group has distributed food and essential items like sanitary napkins, not only among residents of Sonagachi and south Kolkata’s smaller red light pocket in Kalighat, but also slum dwellers, migrants returning to their home state of West Bengal, and villagers in the South and North 24 Parganas
and Hooghly districts.
“We were looking for a supplier of glove and masks for distributing these among people when we came across an interstate helpline run by Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, former Kolkata mayor and member of the Rajya Rabha. We joined his team, and soon, along with some (other) members of the helpline, started our initiative ‘Ektu Din’ (Give A Little),” said Bhattacharya.
The former mayor had formed a team of lawyers and social workers in April to run a helpline for migrant workers stranded in other states and enable their return home.
The efforts by Give a Little mattered. On May 17, academicians from Yale School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School released their findings of a study called Modelling the Effect of Continued Closure of Red-light Areas on COVID-19 Transmission in India, which stated that
Indians were at a much lower risk of getting Covid-19 if red light areas are kept closed after the lockdown, until an effective treatment or vaccine for COVID-19 is developed.
According to the National Aids Control Organization (NACO), there are over 637,500 sex workers in India, and over 500,000 customers visit the red-light areas daily.
The study showed that if the red-light areas started operating, the disease would spread extremely fast and infect a very high percentage of sex workers