Don't slack off

Vaccination programme cannot lose govt attention

The Indian vaccination programme against Covid-19 depended crucially on the Covishield vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India and, to a lesser extent, on Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. It has now been reported by this newspaper that both these companies have closed down some of their production lines and shifted resources to other vaccines, apparently because there are no more supply commitments. This cannot be viewed as unalloyed good news. While almost a billion first doses have been handed out in India, only 0.84 billion second doses have been administered as of Tuesday. In addition, only 12.3 million booster doses have been registered among the over-60s, the only ones eligible for the booster. It is clear therefore that, while great strides have been made, vaccination coverage remains incomplete. It is hard to understand why at every step of the chain — from producer, to hospital, to government — the vaccination programme seems to have lost energy since Omicron.

 While it is certainly true that the Omicron variant apparently produced milder disease than the Delta variant, it is still dangerous, especially for the unvaccinated — as the experience in China and Hong Kong bears out. The reopening and revival of the economy, and the end of Covid restrictions, depend upon the assumption that sufficient vaccination has been carried out. But it appears that, by stealth, the government and other relevant decision-makers have decided to move on from their duty to vaccinate every Indian. It is certainly very dangerous to extrapolate from the falling case count in India that the pandemic is over. That mistake has been made multiple times before, and it should not be made again. It could hardly have been predicted that Omicron would create the chaos that it has in Hong Kong, for example, over two years after the start of the pandemic. That was a consequence of overconfidence.

In any case, if no supply constraints now exist, it is not clear why the booster dose is not being opened up to all Indians. If the government is concerned about costs, then at least it should return to its previous plan of allowing such doses to be handed out by private sector hospitals to those willing to pay. The Union ministry of external affairs has pointed out that many countries around the world now require a booster dose for entry, and so has urged the Union health ministry that, at the very least, boosters should be made available to international travellers. Even otherwise, the science has been clear that protection from the vaccines can fade over time, especially against new variants, which means that boosters are essential for the broader population and not just frontline workers or the elderly. The government’s delay in acting on these scientific results is inexplicable and inviting trouble. It is also important that decisions on the Indian vaccination programme be made on the basis of data and studies of protection against Covid-19’s various variants carried out among Indian subjects. Real-world data on this has not been collected, collated or released by the Indian authorities as much as has been the case by their peers worldwide. Sensible decisions about vaccination, vulnerability, and reopening can only be made on the basis of real-world data. The government must remedy this deficit as soon as possible.