NEW DELHI (AP) – India is expanding its COVID-19 vaccination effort beyond healthcare and front-line workers, providing photos to the elderly and those with medical conditions that endanger them. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first to be inoculated on Monday.
Those now eligible to be vaccinated include people over the age of 60, as well as those over the age of 45 who have conditions such as heart disease or diabetes that make them vulnerable to serious COVID-19 disease. The images will be offered free of charge at government hospitals and will also be sold at more than 10,000 private hospitals at a fixed price of Rs 250, or $ 3.40, per shot.
Modi, 70, was shot at the All India Institute of Medical Science in New Delhi. He called for everyone to be vaccinated, then tweeted, “Together, let’s make India COVID-19 free!”
The country with almost 1.4 billion people has started one of the largest vaccination operations in the world in January, but the launch was slow.
New coronavirus infections are rising again after months of steady decline, and scientists have detected worrying variants of the virus that they fear could speed up infections or make vaccines or treatments less useful. Vaccination of several people is a priority, with the Indian Ministry of Health urging states on Sunday “not to lower their guard” and “to squander the gains of collective labor in the last year.”
India has more than 11 million cases, the second largest in the world behind the United States, with more than 157,000 deaths in the country due to COVID-19.
Even though India is home to the largest vaccine manufacturers in the world and has one of the largest immunization programs, things did not go according to plan. Of the 10 million health workers the government initially wanted to immunize, only 6.6 million received the first blow and 2.4 million received both. Of its 20 million workers, such as police or sanitation, only 5.1 million have been vaccinated so far.
Dr. Gagangdeep Kang, an infectious disease expert at Christian Medical College Vellore in southern India, said the reluctance of health workers to be vaccinated highlights the lack of available information about vaccines. If health workers are reluctant, “do you seriously think the general public will go for the vaccine?” she said.
India has set an immunization target for 300 million people, almost the entire US population, by August.
The increase in infections in India is most pronounced in the western state of Maharashtra, where the number of active cases has almost doubled to over 68,000 in the last two weeks. Blockades and other restrictions have been re-imposed in some areas, and the head of state, Uddhav Thackeray, warned that another wave of cases was “knocking on our door”.
Similar increases have been reported in states in all corners of the massive country: Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir in the north, Gujarat in the west, West Bengal in the east, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in central India and Telangana in the south.
Senior federal officials have called on authorities in these states to increase vaccination rates in districts where cases are on the rise, and to monitor infection groups and monitor for variants.
“There is a sense of urgency because of the mutants and because the cases are growing,” said Dr. K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India.
He said the steady decline in cases over months has led to a reduced perception of threats, leading to hesitation in the vaccine. Experts point out that vaccination reluctance has been amplified, at least in part, by opaque government decisions while green light vaccines. “The (vaccination) mechanism started when the perception was that the worst was over, so people were more hesitant,” Reddy said.
India’s health care system is uneven, and in many small towns, people depend on private hospitals for their medical needs. Allowing these hospitals to be vaccinated will open up access to photos, experts said. India had launched online software to keep track of photos and recipients, but the system was prone to errors and delays.
What is still unclear is whether people will choose between the AstraZeneca vaccine or one from the Indian vaccine manufacturer Bharat Biotech. The latter obtained approval from Indian regulators in January, with no evidence from late studies showing that the shots were effective in preventing diseases caused by coronavirus infection.
For now, the priority is to increase the number of vaccines every day, said Jishnu Das, a health economist at Georgetown University who advises the state of West Bengal on the pandemic. However, he added that with COVID-19, there are always gutters and peaks, and the key lesson is that it will not end until enough people are vaccinated to slow the spread of the virus.
“Don’t use a gutter to declare success and say it’s over,” he said.
___
Associated Press writer Krutika Pathi contributed to the report.
___
The Associated Press Department of Health and Science receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. AP is solely responsible for all content.