NEW DELHI (AP) – India started on Saturday to vaccinate health workers in what is arguably the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccination campaign, joining richer countries where efforts are already underway.
India is home to the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers and has one of the largest immunization programs. But there is no roadmap for the enormity of the current challenge.
Indian authorities hope to shoot 300 million people, roughly the US population and many times more than the existing program targeting 26 million infants. Recipients include 30 million doctors, nurses, and other front-line workers, followed by 270 million people who are either over the age of 50 or who have an illness that makes them vulnerable to COVID-19.
For workers who pulled India’s battered health care system through the pandemic, the shots provided confidence that life can return to normal. Many are bursting with pride.
“I’m excited to be one of the first to get the vaccine,” said Gita Devi, a nurse, as she lifted her left sleeve to get the injection.
“I am happy to receive an Indian-made vaccine and that we are not dependent on others for it,” said Devi, who treated patients during the pandemic at a hospital in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state in the heart of India. .
The first dose was administered to a sanitation worker at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in the capital. New Delhi, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi kickstarted the campaign with a national televised speech.
“We’re launching the world’s largest vaccination program and it shows the world our capabilities,” said Modi. He implored citizens to remain vigilant and not believe “rumors about the safety of the vaccines.”
It was not clear whether Modi, 70, had taken the vaccine himself like other world leaders as an example of the safety of the shot. His government has said that in the initial phase of the rollout, politicians will not be seen as priority groups.
Health officials have not specified what percentage of India’s nearly 1.4 billion people will be targeted by the campaign. But experts say it will almost certainly be the largest such drive in the world.
The sheer scale has its obstacles. For example, India plans to rely heavily on a digital platform to track vaccine shipping and delivery. But public health experts point out that the internet remains patchy in much of the country, with some remote villages not connected at all.
About 100 people would be vaccinated on the first day at each of the country’s 3,006 centers, the health ministry said.
News cameras have documented the injections in hundreds of hospitals, underscoring pent-up hopes that vaccination was the first step to get past the pandemic that destroyed the lives of so many Indians and devastated the country’s economy.
India approved emergency use on January 4 of two vaccines, one developed by the University of Oxford and the UK-based drug company AstraZeneca, and another by the Indian company Bharat Biotech. Cargo planes flew 16.5 million shots to various Indian cities last week.
But doubts about the effectiveness of the homegrown vaccine create obstacles to the ambitious plan.
Health experts are concerned that the regulatory shortcut taken to approve the Bharat Biotech vaccine without waiting for concrete data demonstrating its effectiveness in preventing coronavirus disease could reinforce the vaccine’s reluctance . At least one health minister has opposed its use.
In New Delhi, doctors at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, one of the largest in the city, demanded that they be given the AstraZeneca vaccine instead of the one developed by Bharat Biotech. A doctors’ union at the hospital said many of its members were “a little worried about the lack of a full trial” for the homegrown vaccine.
“At the moment we don’t have the option to choose between the vaccines,” said Dr. Nirmalaya Mohapatra, Vice President of the hospital’s Resident Doctors Association.
The Indian Ministry of Health has criticized the vaccines, saying the vaccines are safe, but says health workers have no choice in deciding which vaccine to get themselves.
According to Dr. SP Kalantri, the director of a rural hospital in Maharashtra, India’s hardest-hit state, was concerned about such an approach, saying the approval was hasty and not backed by science.
“In a rush to be populist, the government () is making decisions that may not be in the best interest of the common man,” Kalantri said.
Against the backdrop of the rising global death toll from COVID-19 – more than 2 million Friday – the clock is ticking to vaccinate as many people as possible. But the campaign was uneven.
In wealthy countries, including the United States, Britain, Israel, Canada and Germany, millions of citizens have already received some measure of protection with at least one dose of vaccines that have been developed at revolutionary speed and can be used quickly.
But elsewhere, immunization drives have barely taken off. Many experts predict another year of loss and hardship in countries like Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for about a quarter of the world’s COVID-19 deaths.
India ranks second to the US with 10.5 million confirmed cases and third in deaths, after the US and Brazil, with 152,000.
More than 35 million doses of different COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide, according to the University of Oxford.
While the majority of COVID-19 vaccine doses have already been picked up by rich countries, COVAX, a UN-backed project to deliver shots to developing countries, is short of vaccines, money and logistical assistance.
As a result, the World Health Organization chief scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, said this week that it is highly unlikely that herd immunity – which would require at least 70% of the world to be vaccinated – will be achieved this year.
“Even if it happens in a few pockets, in a few countries, it won’t protect people around the world,” she said.
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Associated Press writer Biswajeet Banerjee in Lucknow, India, contributed to this report.