New Delhi: India is unlikely to achieve its target of vaccinating all its adult population by December this year if it continues administering only 40 lakh doses per day on an average, India's top public health experts told ETV Bharat on Tuesday. In addition, India also needs to bring more vaccine manufacturers to the domestic market as vaccinating the entire population with three existing vaccines are not enough. Another critical point that required urgent attention is vaccine hesitancy.
"Despite several initiatives to attract people for vaccination, we can see a good number of our population are still hesitant to get vaccine doses for Covid-19," said Dr Giridhar Gyani, Director General of Association of Health Care Providers (AHCP-India) in an exclusive interaction with ETV Bharat. Ever since India launched revised vaccination guidelines on June 21, 40 lakh people are being administered daily on an average basis. The number, however, touched an all-time high of 88 lakh on the first day itself.
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Significantly, the Union Health Ministry has set a December timeline to inoculate all adult citizens. "We need to administer near about 1 crore doses per day if we want to vaccinate all our people by December," said Dr Gyani. He also emphasised the need for the availability of vaccines. "With three different vaccines in our hand, we should continue the vaccination drive so that by the time we get more vaccines in the market, the people who are hesitant (25-30 per cent of the population) also come forward for inoculation," added Dr Gyani.
Health Ministry statistics show that with three available vaccines including Covaxin, Covishield and Sputnik V, India till date vaccinated 38.15 crore people of all ages priority group. The Health Ministry has earlier projected a target of 2.16 billion vaccines to be procured to complete the vaccination drive between August to December. However, one month after the projection, the government informed the Supreme Court that 1.35 billion doses will be available between August to December, which is 800 million lower than the Health Ministry's projection set in May.
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"This was a projection. However, it was necessary to explore all options to achieve the targetted projection. Here the availability of vaccines and their production also plays a critical role," added Dr Gyani. He said that it is very much necessary to bring other pharmaceutical players into the market as soon as possible. "We can expect vaccines from Johnson and Johnson as well as Zydus Cadila any time soon," said Dr Gyani.
It may be mentioned here that India's drug regulator, Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) has recently given emergency use authorisation to US-based Moderna to bring its medicine to the Indian population. The urgency of getting more vaccines was also highlighted by another public health expert and president of Organised Medicine Academic Guild (OMAG) Dr Suneela Garg. "We need 30 crore doses per month if we want to inoculate 1 crore people per day. And for this we need to increase the production capacity of the already available vaccines," said Dr Garg who is also the president of the Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSM).
She said that India needs 180 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines to inoculate the 90 crore population who is above 18 years of age. On average, India at present acquires 10-11 crore doses per month. As per statistics available with "Our World in Data", India with a 304.02 million population is leading the list of countries with at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine followed by 184.13 million in the United States and 86.8 million in Brazil.
Ironically, India stands at number 12 in the global list of countries administering two doses of vaccines. India's full vaccination rate of 5.4 per cent is far less than the global average of 12.3 per cent of full vaccination. The global data stated that Bahrain top the list of countries with 60.1 per cent full vaccination, followed by Israel (60 per cent), Mongolia (54.8 per cent). Counties like the United Kingdom (51.4 per cent), the United States (47.7 per cent), Germany (42.7 per cent), Italy (38.9 per cent), Brazil (14.6 per cent) are also racing above India.
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The data further said that only 73.33 million people in India got fully vaccinated against Covid-19 whereas 230.69 million people got partially vaccinated. As many as 159.27 million people in the US are fully vaccinated. Another health expert Dr Tamorish Kole, however, said that with India's current vaccination rate of 40 lakh per day, it will be able to meet the target of vaccinating 60 per cent of the population for both doses by December 2021.
"According to estimate we will need to inoculate 87 lakh doses per day to achieve the target," said Dr Kole who is also the president of the Asian Society for Emergency Medicine. The National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration, however, believes there will be a boost in vaccine production and an increase in vaccination centres in the coming months.
"There are six additional vaccines in the pipeline that will be soon available in India which is good news on the supply side. On demand side vaccine hesitancy has also been hindering the vaccine administration target, particularly in rural areas," said Dr Kole. He said that with the imminent third wave, India needs to urgently conduct state-level reviews which need to be done on the ground.
"On June 21, India administered 88 lakh doses and thereafter there is a steady decline in daily vaccination rates. If we have demonstrated our capability, we must sustain it," added Dr Kole.
