Covid-19 Vaccine is of no use? India Continues to see spike in Cases

Covid-19 cases have drastically reduced since November 2020. India’s Covid curve has been flattening since the late 2020s, but knowingly or unknowingly it has seen a massive spike since Early 2021. On March 27^th, 2021, a total of 62,632 new and active cases have been found since October 2020. Globally, India is the 3^rd highest number of cases and deaths from Covid-19 after Brazil & the US.

Srinath Reddy, President of the Public Health Foundation of India, said there has been a “Perfect” storm of the spike. “The recent rapid upswing in cases is from a confluence of careless crowd behaviours, slackening of government vigil, and mutations of the virus”.

IRRESPONSIBLE HABITS OF PUBLIC

This massive spike is also a result of the irresponsible and careless attitude of people towards the virus. The very idea that the danger is fully gone, has reinforced overtly confidence in people’s way of living. Maharashtra has seen the biggest impact of this second wave of the corona, with, 320,000 active cases as of 28^th March, 2021. And Maharashtra accounts for 62% of the total covid-19 cases in the country, a record the Maharashtrians wouldn’t be proud of.

BUT WHERE’S THE VACCINE? ARE THEY NOT WORKING?

India’s ability to control the spread of covid-19 and its demand for and supply of vaccines will impact global supply. According to government data, 74 countries are currently using vaccines made in India. In total, India has supplied 60 million doses to the world—8.1 million have been grants to counties including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Nepal. Some 34 million have been commercial sales, and 18 million have been given to Covax.

India began its covid-19 vaccination programme on 16 January. Initially, it was only for health and frontline workers. On 1 March, this was expanded to everyone older than 60, and those older than 45 who have specific comorbidities. So far, it has administered over 60 million vaccinations, placing it third globally after China and the US

BUT ARE THEY WORKING?

Each vaccine has antidotes, and it possibly takes days or even weeks and months before it starts fully working. Even one needs to take multiple vaccine doses for it to work to its fullest. A new vaccine coverage strategy is needed because the current strategy will take longer to reach herd immunity in the whole country. Without herd immunity, Covid-19 transmission will not stop," says Dileep Mavalankar, Director, Institute of Public Health.

"With a focused city coverage strategy, local herd immunity will be reached much faster in selected high incidence areas and disease will go down rapidly," he adds. For this, bringing in more people into the ambit of the vaccination drive by relaxing the age and co-morbidities criteria should be the way forward. "We need to prioritize areas with rising cases for urgent vaccination and focus on the elderly, those with high-risk medical conditions, immunocompromised patients and essential workers," says Dr Parikh.

Even though we have distributed millions of Covid vaccines around the world, we are short of vaccines to meet the country’s need. Even the first phase of the vaccination drive involving 30 crore Indians would require 60 crore doses.

COVID-19 NEW VARIANT

India began its genomic sequencing project for covid-19 last year but, according to a paper published by Indian government scientists involved in the sequencing, its pace and volume has been insufficient when compared with India’s high number of cases.

A recent press statement from the government said that even though variants of concern have been found in India, they have not been detected in high enough numbers to either establish a direct relationship or explain the rapid surge in cases. In total, Indian government laboratories have done the genome sequencing of 10 787 samples of SARS-CoV2 to look for variants and found 771.

 WE CANNOT AFFORD ANOTHER LOCKDOWN

The Indian government has not enforced another national lockdown as it did in the early months of the pandemic, but the chief ministers of different states have not ruled it out.

It is worrying that the cases have been increasing suddenly at this massive rate, despite vaccinations and massive awareness drive. The political campaigns and crowds in the rallies are a reason behind it, the religious gathering is also another reason. People’s fear regarding the virus have drastically reduced and their habits have returned to being normal not even realizing the fact that THE VIRUS HAVE EVOLVED INTO A MUCH MORE STRONGER FORM THAN EVER BEFORE.