NEW DELHI (AP) – India began inoculating health workers on Saturday in what is likely to be the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccination campaign, joining richer nations, where the effort is already in full swing.
The country is home to the largest vaccine manufacturers in the world and has one of the largest immunization programs. But there is no manual for the enormity of the challenge.
Indian authorities hope to shoot 300 million people, about the US population and several times more than its existing 26 million infant program. Beneficiaries include 30 million doctors, nurses and other front-line workers, followed by another 270 million, who are either over 50 years old or have diseases that make them vulnerable to COVID-19.
For workers who have pulled the health care system in India through the pandemic, the shootings have given confidence that life can begin to return to normal. Many burst with pride.
“I am delighted to be among the first to receive the vaccine,” said nurse Gita Devi as she rolled up her left sleeve to receive the shot.
“I am happy to receive a vaccine made in India and we must not depend on others for it,” said Devi, who treated patients throughout the pandemic at a hospital in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh.
The first dose was given to a health worker at the Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in the capital New Delhi, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi began the campaign with a nationally televised speech.
“We are launching the largest vaccination action in the world and showing the world our capacity,” Modi said. He urged citizens to keep their guard up and not to believe “vaccine safety rumors”.
It was unclear whether the 70-year-old Modi took the vaccine himself like other world leaders as an example of shot safety. His government has said politicians will not be considered priority groups in the first phase of the launch.
Health officials have not specified what percentage of the nearly 1.4 billion people will be targeted by the campaign. But experts say it will almost certainly be the largest unit of its kind globally.
The pure ladder has its obstacles. For example, India intends to rely heavily on a digital platform to track the transport and delivery of vaccines. But public health experts point out that the Internet remains uneven in many parts of the country, and some remote villages are completely unconnected.
About 100 people will be vaccinated in each of the 3,006 centers across the country on the first day, the health ministry said.
News cameras captured the rituals of an injection into hundreds of hospitals, underscoring hopes that vaccination was the first step in overcoming the pandemic that devastated the lives of so many Indians and shattered the country’s economy.
India nodded for emergency use of two vaccines, one developed by Oxford University and the British doctor AstraZeneca, and another by the Indian company Bharat Biotech, on January 4, cargo planes flew 16.5 million shots in various Indian cities last week.
Health experts are concerned that the regulatory shortcoming taken for the approval of the Bharat Biotech vaccine without waiting for concrete data that would show its effectiveness in preventing diseases caused by coronavirus could increase the hesitation of the vaccine. At least one state health minister opposed its use.
The Indian Ministry of Health has criticized the criticism and said the vaccines are safe, but says health workers will have no choice but to decide which vaccine they would receive themselves.
According to Dr. SP Kalantri, director of a rural hospital in Maharashtra, India’s most affected state, such an approach was worrying because he said regulatory approval is rushed and not scientifically supported.
“Hurry to be populist, the government (takes) decisions that may not be in the common man’s interest,” Kalantri said.
Amid rising global deaths COVID-19 – surpassed 2 million on Friday – the clock is ticking to vaccinate as many people as possible. But the campaign was uneven.
In rich countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Canada and Germany, millions of citizens have already received some measure of protection with at least one dose of vaccine developed at a revolutionary rate and quickly authorized for use.
But elsewhere, the immunization actions have just come off the ground. Many experts predict another year of losses and difficulties in places such as Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for about a quarter of the world’s deaths.
India ranks second in the US with 10.5 million confirmed cases, and third in deaths, behind the US and Brazil with 152,000.
More than 35 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide, according to Oxford University.
While most doses of COVID-19 vaccine have already been raised by rich countries, COVAX, a UN-backed project to provide fire in developing parts of the world, has found itself without vaccines, money and logistical assistance.
As a result, the World Health Organization scientist has warned that the immunity of the herd – which would require vaccination of at least 70% of the globe – is unlikely to be reached this year. As the disaster has shown, it is not enough to remove the virus in a few places.
“Even if it happens in a few pockets, in a few countries, it will not protect people around the world,” Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said this week.
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Associated Press writer Biswajeet Banerjee from Lucknow, India, contributed to the report.