Covid-19 Vaccine Matters: India yet to fully vaccinate its healthcare workers

Even after nine months, India is yet to fully vaccinate its healthcare workers, the first group prioritised by the government when it rolled out the Covid-19 vaccination drive in January.

As on September 30, around 85 per cent of the healthcare workers received two shots. Considering more than a crore of such workers got the first dose, it means close to 15 lakh doctors, nurses and paramedical workers did not receive the second shot, though they work in a high-risk environment.

Meanwhile, the number of weekly Covid-19 cases and deaths continued to decline globally, the World Health Organization said, noting that both the case and death incidence have reduced for the past two months in the South-East Asian region.

The Covid-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update, released this week, said over 3.3 million new cases and over 55,000 new deaths were reported around the world during the week of September 20–26, 2021, a decrease of 10 per cent as compared to the previous week for both cases and deaths.

On the other hand, the WHO has reportedly asked Covaxin maker Bharat Biotech for more data on its Covid-19 vaccine, which could further delay the global acceptance tag for the homegrown vaccine. Bharat Biotech stated that it is “diligently working with the WHO to obtain EUL at the earliest.”

India's vaccination drive continued steadily, as sixty-nine per cent of the country's adult population has received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and 25 per cent has taken both doses, the government said on Thursday.

It also said that increased population density raises chances of Covid-19 spread and it will be prudent to avoid non-essential travel and observe festivity at low key.

The government said that 64.1 per cent doses of Covid-19 vaccine has been administered in vaccination centres in rural areas and 35 per cent in urban areas.

The government also said Zydus Cadila's indigenously-developed needle-free Covid-19 vaccine ZyCoV-D will be introduced in the nationwide coronavirus vaccination drive very shortly and would have a differential pricing than the jabs being used currently.

The Serum Institute of India, which produces the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, will resume small exports via the global vaccine-sharing platform COVAX this month and raise it substantially by January, its head told The Telegraph.

"Our exports to COVAX will recommence again in October, initially these supplies will be small but by January 2022, once we have satisfied domestic demands – people forget that India is still a lower-middle income country – we will see large volumes go to COVAX," Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla said.

In a possible blow to India's vaccination drive, however, some private hospitals have cancelled orders for Russia's Sputnik V vaccine as they struggle to sell Covid-19 shots amid surging supplies of free doses of other vaccines offered by the government.

Some industry officials said low demand and the extremely cold storage temperatures required have spurred at least three big hospitals to cancel orders for Sputnik V, sold only on the private market in the world's biggest producer of vaccines.

Pfizer has submitted research to the US Food and Drug Administration on the effectiveness of its Covid-19 vaccine in children but the shots may not be available until November.

The company said it provided health regulators with data from a recent study of its vaccine in children 5 to 11 years old. Officials had said previously they would file an application with the FDA to authorise use in the coming weeks.

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