Myths of COVID-19 vaccination: I don t need the vaccine if I stay home, physical distance, wear a mask in public Taking precautions post-vaccination is important, since we know it can be airborne, and some emerging new variants seem to be more infectious, experts point out. Kavya Narayanan January 29, 2021 17:25:03 IST
As of 29 January 2021, over
28 lakh healthcare workers in India have received a vaccination as part of the national COVID-19 vaccination drive. The vaccination campaign isn t yet open to the general population. But as more people are invited to get vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, many questions are being raised about vaccination, and the usefulness of Bharat Biotech s Covaxin and Serum Institute of India s Covishield – the vaccines approved for emergency-use in India – in preventing COVID-19
India s Covid vaccine drive off target as only half of people turn up to appointments
Health workers are reluctant to take a vaccine for which they say there is not adequate efficacy data
India aims to vaccinate 10 million health workers by the end of February
Credit: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
Reluctance to take vaccines is jeopardising the world s biggest Covid jabs campaign with even health workers in India apparently wary of receiving shots.
Barely half of Indian doctors and nurses are showing up to vaccine appointments, prompting forecasts that the world s second most populous nation is dramatically behind vaccination targets.
Emergency use authorisation was granted to two vaccines being manufactured in the country, the AstraZeneca/Oxford University jab and Bharat Biotech’s state-funded Covaxin, on January 3. However, the Covaxin jab has yet to complete phase three trials.
As of 24 January 2021, some
16 lakh healthcare workers in India have been vaccinated under the national COVID-19 vaccination drive. The vaccination campaign isn t yet open to the general population. However, more people are being invited to get vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 by the day, and many questions still linger about vaccination, and the utility of the vaccines approved for emergency-use in India, in preventing COVID-19 disease in those who have been immunised.
Bharat Biotech s Covaxin and Serum Institute of India s Covishield are the only two vaccines with approval for emergency-use in India. The clinical trial process for these vaccines were fast tracked, cutting years from the testing and observation phases of the trial. Does this compromise the safety of these vaccines?
opting out of taking the vaccine, even though they are among a designated priority group invited to get them. In the past, concerns that led to vaccine hesitancy included the possibility of getting the very disease that the immunisation was meant to protect against. Most vaccines are inactivated, or killed, vaccines.it isn’t possible to contract the disease from these vaccines, explained Dr Shahid Jameel, CEO of the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance and Director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University. All the vaccines in development in India right now, except Covaxin, don’t have the virus in them – they have only a gene from the virus.
Even though India inoculated its first one million individuals faster than the US and UK, the country may take up to three years to vaccinate the prioritised 300 million population going by the current rate, experts have estimated. India’s current capacity is about vaccinating 300,000 people per day. Going by the first week’s number, the current rate of vaccination is about