‘There’s been misconception... both the vaccines are safe’
While the Covid-19 vaccination drive is in progress in Rajasthan, Dr Sudhir Bhandari, the principal and controller of SMS Medical College and Hospital and a member of the state advisory board for Covid-19, talks to Jaykishan Sharma about various issues facing the drive including safety concerns. Excerpts:
Are the vaccines safe? Some questions are being raised on the third phase trials of the vaccines?
There has been a lot of confusion about Covaxin and Covishield. Both are equally safe and have 90 % to 95% efficacy. There has been some misconception about early launch of Covaxin. I would like to strongly tell you that launching vaccine in the third phase of trial is as good as completion of the trial because we have to protect lives rather than wait and watch.
What are the side effects of the vaccine?
Fortunately, the adverse reaction rate (of Covid vaccines) is only 0.8%, which is (in the form of) mild fever, body ache etc. But always remember, there is a difference between adverse effect and side effect. Adverse effect confirms that vaccine has its effect and body has started reacting to it. So, people should trust it (the vaccine) blindly. Vaccine will reduce the complications, symptoms of disease and prevent from hospitalisation. It is disease-preventive. Vaccine will not prevent the recurrence of infection. Even after the vaccination, everybody has to follow Covid protocols.
Once a hot spot of Covid cases, the numbers of positive cases are constantly declining in Jaipur and Rajasthan?
Rajasthan’s model of management has been appreciated across the world including United Nations. We followed strict protocols. Like any best centre in the world, investigations of Covid-19 patients included HRCT chest, CT pulmonary angiography, ultrasonography of lung and echo with Doppler state. SMS Hospital is geared up with most advanced investigation facilities like assessment of cytokine storm. All critical patients were also assessed for clotting disorder by D-dimer and many other tests. Because of these advanced investigations of Covid-19 patients, the management of these patients was very scientific. Our hospital is pioneer in giving Covid plasma therapy and monoclonal antibodies to the critically ill patients with very good results. We were the first hospital to use hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and antiHIV drugs Lopinavir and Ritonavir in first few patients of Covid-19 with very good outcome.
How is Rajasthan’s management is different from others?
On investigation front, in first week of March initial samples of Covid-19 were sent to Pune and today SMS has acquired capacity of doing 6,000 tests per day in-house. It is a sense of pride that as on today SMS Medical College has done more than 6 lakh RT-PCR tests and soon in next two weeks with arrival of new equipment, our capacity is going to be 10,000 per day. Today, SMS Medical College has 1,700 beds dedicated to Covid-19 management.