India’s Vaccine Shortage

India’s Prime Minister announced ‘Teeka Utsav’ to promote covid-vaccination as well as to counter the second wave of infection. But on the contrary vaccinations have been declining afterwards.

Experts believe that herd immunity stage needs to be achieved to counter the spread of any infection i.e., more than 70 per cent of the population needs to be vaccinated. According to some studies, it can take almost 16 months to vaccinate 70 per cent of India’s population with first dose and almost 9 years to vaccinate them with both first and second doses.

A popular science journal and the Indian Medical Association itself has criticized India’s vaccination program. India, popular as ‘Vaccine factory of the world’ has been running short of vaccine supply which ultimately led to a situation where many Indian states are unable to achieve their vaccination targets. Odisha had to shut 60 per cent of it’s vaccination centers due to shortage of vaccines in the month of May.

As people are unable to find vaccines at their nearest centers, they are going to other cities to get vaccinated. For example some people residing at Gurgaon had to go to Manesar whereas some Delhites are going to Rohtak and residents of Rohtak are visiting villages to get vaccinated. Thus villagers have complained of not having enough vaccines left for the residents.

Causes

The first reason of the shortage is the insufficient capacity of the manufacturers. According to the targets of the central government of India, almost 10 crore doses of vaccines need to be manufactured every month but the current capacity of the manufacturing companies combined together lies at 7.5 crores which would increase to 11 crores by July. Another fact to be kept in mind is Serum Institute manufactured vaccines are not solely for the Indian population. SII needs to supply 40 per cent of its vaccines to Covax which is an initiative of several organizations including WHO to supply vaccines to more than 90 economically backward countries.

Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine approved by India can’t really help either as the manufacturer’s capacity lies at 500k only. However the initiative to manufacture Sputnik V in India might prove helpful.

Another reason is the lack of orders by the Indian government to the manufacturers. Under Operation Warp Speed the USA placed advanced orders with many vaccine companies even before their vaccines were approved and even though some vaccines didn’t get approved still USA had guaranteed supplies of vaccines for its population. Whereas the Indian government did not place any such advanced orders. Reasons behind this might be the lack of funds to place advanced orders. Poonawala from SII said in an interview that they couldn’t improve their capacities as there were no orders from the government of India. The statement was justified afterwards but if there lies truth in such statement, its the failure of the government of India. Another reason of not placing advanced orders might be the assumption that the infection was over at the end of the first wave of infection.

Under ‘Vaccine Maitri’ program India exported large quantities of vaccines to other countries. From January to April 2021 more vaccine doses were exported than vaccinated Indian residents.

First order placed for vaccines by the Indian government was 1.65 crore doses in the month of January 2021 and 1.5 crore doses in February. The government of India placed the first huge order of 12 crore doses in March 2021 when the country was already struck by the second wave of infection.

Adar Poonawala of SII said the vaccine shortage may go on till July 2021. Several experts have also warned about third and fourth wave of infection in the country as the infection continues to spread within the population alongside the slow vaccination.

The situation got even more complicated when the central government ordered states to arrange vaccine supplies for themselves. Many states released global tenders. Many companies whereas were not ready to deal only with central governments of countries. The chaos was ended with the central government of India announcing vaccinations free of cost for all its adult population and supplies being sent to states by the center after Supreme Court intervened the matter.

Possible Solutions

Government may help the manufacturers with funds and supplies to increase their capacity. Other new manufacturers may also be looked forward to maximize the vaccine production.
We should also start preparing for upcoming challenges of the pandemic. In the current situation the problem may lie with vaccine supplies but soon when the supplies would be sufficient the awareness about vaccines would prove to be the main issue.

For example many rural residents of Tamil Nadu are reluctant to vaccines after a famous actor Vivek died following inoculation. And if such problems prevail for longer, herd immunity stage would be harder to achieve.

3. As epidemiologist Giridhara Babu said the authorities should go for detailed district plans and social mobilization strategies to reach vulnerable communities.