Lessons from India s jab rollout
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published : 29 Jan 2021 at 04:00
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In just 12 days after India launched its Covid-19 vaccination programme on Jan 16 touted as the world s largest coronavirus jab rollout more than 2.3 million healthcare workers have been inoculated against the virus. In Phase I of the drive, India plans to vaccinate some 30 million healthcare and frontline workers.
For India, such large-scale vaccinations are not new. Every year, 27 million infants are immunised against 12 diseases. The government s polio immunisation drive, which successfully eradicated the disease from India, has even set the global standard for such programmes.
Worth noting is the fact that the two Covid-19 vaccines authorised for emergency use in the country are domestically manufactured the AstraZeneca/Oxford-developed Covishield, which is produced by the Serum Institute of India; and Covaxin, developed indigenously by Bharat Biotech and the Indian C