Sir,
That the Government of India has decided to vaccinate the health professionals and front line workers is a welcome step. Over 700 doctors and many more health workers died during the fight against COVID. Since the health workers are at a high risk they need to be vaccinated on priority. The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) has cleared the use of Covidshield vaccine by Oxford – Astra Zeneca for use in India. The Covaxin vaccine by Biotech India has been kept as a backup.
It is very important to prove the safety along with the efficacy because vaccination is done on the healthy persons to prevent the disease. This is in contrast to the medicines which are given to the already diseased person for cure. Normally it may take 4 to 5 years to roll out the vaccine. Emergency situation created necessity that vaccine should be brought out early. So some relaxations in trials were given. But nevertheless the safety component cannot be compromised. Waiting for a few weeks more would have built more trust on Covaxin.
We have experience of giving vaccine to large number of population, but this vaccine is different. We have successfully vaccinated children under 5 years of age under the Pulse Polio programme which forms about 20 crores population. But the pulse polio vaccine is given orally and any person with little training could do the job. Vaccine against COVID needs to be given in the injection form in two doses. Every vaccinated person has to be observed for 30 minutes after the injection to check for any adverse reaction. Therefore we need a large number of well trained people to give injections and to observe if the person is developing any adverse reaction. They should also have expertise to control the side effects.
Unless the Government takes over whole exercise on its own for all the citizens, the affluent citizens will buy it from market leaving the low income groups unvaccinated. The selective vaccine based on economic status will further accentuate the inequities in health.
Dr Arun Mitra
New Delhi
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