A jab at veracity

States should not aim to artificially push vaccination numbers

India crossed the five million vaccination mark for the third consecutive day on Wednesday, which is a significant improvement from the earlier score. There are some other encouraging takeaways too from this. They indicate the existence of institutional capabilities to deliver 8.6 million vaccines — a feat achieved on the first day when the Centre’s “free-for-all” vaccination policy came into effect — far higher than the daily mean of two-three million. If the data from the National Technical Group on Immunisation in India is correct, the country will have 200-220 million doses of vaccines by July-August, meaning supply should no longer be a big constraint. The problem, however, is that meeting the “vaccination for all” target by December this year requires around nine million doses daily, seven days a week. In that context, the five-million-plus vaccine mark on Tuesday and Wednesday is already a sharp decline from the opening day score.

The need also is to put real performance ahead of extravaganza. For example, the euphoria over the record vaccination delivery on Monday has already been tempered by sobering assessments that suggest that the numbers were achieved through some adroit inventory management by states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Media investigations have shown that it was a result of BJP states going slow on vaccinations in the run-up to Monday to stockpile supplies for that day. Madhya Pradesh, which delivered the highest number of 1.7 million doses on Monday, is a good example of the practice followed by other states. The day before, a Sunday, it delivered just 692 vaccines, which is lower than even the average Sunday slump. But the state appears to have been preparing for this spike five days ahead, with daily jabs falling from 338,847 doses on June 16 to 22,006 doses on June 19.

This trend has been true for Karnataka, which delivered just 68,172 jabs on June 20, spiked to 1.1 million on June 21, and fell to 392,427 the next day. The same is true for Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, and Assam. Non-BJP ruled states did not display similar roller-coaster graphs. Maharashtra, for instance, delivered 383,495 vaccines on June 21, only slightly higher than the 381,765 delivered on June 19, whereas Andhra Pradesh actually saw a sharp drop on Monday following a peak on Sunday. To be sure, at least part of the spike was also on account of a sensible change in policy by the Centre, allowing states to use stocks reserved for the 45-plus age group to be used for the 18-44 group. This, for instance, accounted for a spike in Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh.

The stakeholders in the government should graduate from event management and get down to sustained work, as accelerating the pace of vaccination is becoming critical. India has vaccinated just about a fifth of the population, the bulk with just one dose, which compares poorly even with Brazil, which has vaccinated 40 per cent of its population, though this is way behind China at 90 per cent and the US at 95 per cent. With Covid-19 remaining a threat to India’s revival, the need is to make sure that the pace doesn’t flag, as the required rate will then grow steeper.