Failed Vaccination Policy !!

 India 's vaccine rollout was abysmally slow, marred by official complacency and a lack of vision about it's critical role in fighting return waves.

Source: ft.com

Speed of vaccination : India began it's vaccination programme on 16th Jan , 2021. As on 20th May, India has administered 19, 18, 79, 503 doses overall includind first and second doses of vaccines. The two vaccines which received emergency approval are-

1. Covieshield: ( a brand of Oxford- Astrazeneca vaccines manufactured by Serum Institute).

2. Covaxin: ( developed by Bharat Biotech)

The pace of vaccination in India was drastically slowed down on 5th April, India hit an impressive vaccination peak of 4.5 million received their vaccine jobs which continuosly slows down.

Source: Financial Express 

Source: hindustantimes.com

Delay in placing orders: Before this pandemic, India was known as 'pharmacy of the World' and Serum Intitute of India as the World's largest vaccine manufacturer'.But inspite of all of this, India saw a severe shortage of vaccines. The major reason behind is that Indian govt. had not placed an order of vaccines till December and placed its first order in Jnauary when the other countries were placing big orders to vaccine companies till July to December and even after that. For instance America had given order of 1.3 billion vaccines with population of 39 crore( apx ). Britain gave order of 450 million vaccines( 7 crore population). Canada's givan order is  in a large extent that it can provide 10-10 vaccines for 1 person and many other countries were also doing like this. So when the situation is under control, Central govt. had not placed any global tender and now when situation is out of control, the responsibility of placing global tender is put on State government.

Source: Financial Express

Source: bbc.com

Contradictory policy and double standered

There is also a lot of contradiction in India's own policy. Such as on 2nd October India and South Africa appealed to WHO that the companies which are making the vaccines should up it's right of potent and intellectual property so that other companies also make up the vaccines. But in India the Central govt.which itself has joint potent of Bharat Biotech vaccines is not giving license and potent  to other companies of India to ramp up the vaccination. Now the second example is thet Indian govt. and DGCI has rejected the proposal to conduct large study or trials for Russia's Sputnik- V vaccine on october 2020 by releasing a statement that there is phase-3 trials took place to determine its safety and efficacy. But the DGCI on Jnauary 2, 2021 approved emergency use of Covaxin even though it had not completed phase-3 trials.

Source: The Hindu and Scroll.in

Pricing and export

There is also many other problems. Adar poonawala, CEO of Serum Institute said in an interview that severe shortage of vaccines would continue to July due to lack of orders by Indian govt. India is also a country with three vaccine prices, for Central govt.it's 150 Rs., 300 Rs. for states and 600 Rs. for private hospitals. Dr. Gagandeep Kang, India's top virologist said that these prices of vaccines are ridiculous. India also exported 66 million doses of vaccines to other countries in the name of 'vaccine maitri or diplomacy'at the cost of our own people which now India is paying for. However, the export of vaccines is halted by Indian government.

Source: Official statement of Serum institute of India

 

Source: twitter.com

We hope that these problems will be resolved as soon as possible.

As covid is increasing we want nothing more than our world to be safe and sound.

Please follow the COVID 19 guidelines and be safe.

We will further talk about this in our upcoming blogs. Thank you readers for giving us our time.