This weekend, on Saturday 16 January, PM Modi inaugurated the vaccination drive against Covid-19 in India over video conferencing. The pan-India launch was joined by over 3000 sites from all states and union territories of India. It is the world’s largest vaccination drive. It may seem ambitious and beyond the capacity of a developing country but India has enormous experience of undertaking large vaccination programmes, with the largest vaccination programme already in existence in India. It is through this extensive nationwide drive that India managed to eradicate the dreaded polio disease a few years ago. The drive started off with India vaccinating the largest number of people on day one, larger than the US, the UK or France on day one.
The vaccination drive against Covid-19 will be a mammoth exercise for India. To prepare for this, dry runs were carried out in various parts of the country with some mock drills followed by a nationwide dry run in all the districts across India. The country’s systems were already armed with this preparation, when the first consignment of vaccines rolled out from the Pune based Serum Institute of India and Hyderabad based Bharat Biotech. PM Modi has assured the country that those who need it most will get the vaccine first. All Indians can take pride that we have two made in India vaccines that will help our country come out of this pandemic. India now has to undertake the world’s largest vaccination drive efficiently and speedily. Not only that, we have to come forward and share our vaccines with others too. There is a lot of worry and concern about the vaccine.
Social media, especially WhatsApp groups are abuzz with reports and opinions on the subject. Every case of side effect and adverse reaction creates panic amongst people who are filled with anxiety over this issue. There are many who make repeated declarations of their intention to not get the vaccine. Others support the hard work of the world’s scientists and express faith in the system. Dr Guleria, Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi has repeatedly reassured people of the country that the vaccine is safe and efficacious and that we must have faith in our researchers, scientists and regulatory authorities. These are some of the challenges that have emerged as the vaccination drive moves forwards. Personally, I am in favour of vaccination.
To start with, we have to take into account the risk of not taking the vaccine. With coronavirus continuing its threatening impact, I feel that it is better to take the risk of some side effects rather than face the risk of getting Covid-19, a risk that is not going away at least in the near future. More importantly, it is necessary to see beyond the headlines. In a lot of the extreme cases of side effects, there are some complicating factors that are revealed only in the detailed report. Most people do not read the entire story and form their impression on the basis of the headline. This can often be misleading. One is also reminded of the old cliche that ‘good news is no news’.
People in the media often say that if a dog bites a human being, it’s not news, the reverse would make headlines! So let us not be in a hurry to make adverse judgements about whether or not to have faith in the vaccine. Let us make a reasoned study of the subject before we doubt the hard work and sincerity of those who have made these vaccines possible in the shortest possible time imaginable. In the absence of a known cure for Covid-19, vaccines remain our sole hope of emerging from this pandemic. So far, this virus has already claimed over 2 million lives. The graph in India has been steadily coming down. With the start of the vaccination drive, we can hope that the beginning of the end has started in India. The UK’s steep increase in new cases in the winter was explained by the identification of a new variant by scientists in the UK. The early alert by the UK of this new, more contagious variant led to the closing of air corridors, thus hopefully helping contain this variant. Vaccination drive is now on in the UK too and we hope to see a better situation by the spring.
