NEW DELHI, Feb 24: India was able to save more than 3.4 million lives by undertaking a nationwide COVID-19 vaccination campaign at an unprecedented scale, said a report by Stanford University.
The Covid vaccination campaign also yielded a positive economic impact by preventing a loss of USD 18.3 billion, the working paper by Stanford University and Institute for Competitiveness titled ‘Healing the Economy: Estimating the Economic Impact on India’s vaccination and related issues’ released by Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Friday said.
Mandaviya said much before COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) in January 2020, processes and structures to focus dedicatedly on various facets of the pandemic management were put in place.
He virtually addressed the ‘The India Dialog’ session on the Economic Impact of Vaccination and Related Matters.
“India under the leadership of honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji adopted a ‘Whole of Government’ and ‘Whole of Society’ approach in a proactive, preemptive and graded manner, thus adopting a holistic response strategy for effective management of COVID-19,” the minister said.
The dialog was organised by Institute for Competitiveness and US-Asia Technology Management Center, Stanford University.
The paper discusses the role of containment as a measure to prevent the spread of the virus. It highlights that, as against the top-down approach, a bottom-up approach was critical in containing the virus.
Moreover, the report remarkably notes that robust measures at the ground level, like contact tracing, mass testing, home quarantine, distribution of essential medical equipment, revamping healthcare infrastructure and constant coordination among stakeholders at the centre, state and district levels not only helped contain the spread of the virus but also in augmenting the health infrastructure.
It elaborates the three cornerstones of India’s strategy — containment, relief package and vaccine administration.
It observes that these three measures were critical in saving lives and ensuring economic activity by containing the spread of COVID-19, sustaining livelihoods and developing immunity against the virus.
The working paper further notes that India was able to save more than 3.4 million lives by undertaking the nationwide vaccination campaign at an unprecedented scale.
It said the vaccination campaign was always on saving lives. However, the campaign also yielded a positive economic impact by preventing the loss of USD 18.3 billion, it added.
A net benefit of USD 15.42 billion occurred for the nation after taking into consideration the cost of the vaccination campaign, the report said.
Hailing the decision of early lockdown by the prime minister as a significant turning point, Mandaviya said it enabled the government to leverage community response in its five-pronged strategy namely Test, Track, Treat, Vaccination, Adherence for implementing Covid Appropriate Behaviour (CAB) and delivering a rapid and robust institutional response to combat COVID-19.
He said that the government focused on augmenting health infrastructure in terms of Covid-related beds, drugs, logistics i.E., N-95 masks, PPE kits and medical oxygen, simultaneously up-skilling human resources though Centres of Excellences and deploying digital solutions such as eSanjeevani Telemedicine service, Aarogya Setu, COVID-19 India Portal etc. (PTI)
Equal weightage was given to scaling up the testing infrastructure at an unprecedented rate exceeding the superlative figure 917.8 million tests conducted. Additionally, a network of 52 labs for genomic surveillance was established for monitoring emerging variants of the virus, he added. (PTI)
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