Government in talks with other countries to import vaccines The country is currently relying on two “made in India” jabs NEW DELHI: India said Friday it would vaccinate its whole population by this December, despite mounting criticism over its sluggish immunization drive. India started its rollout on Jan. 16 and has so far inoculated just 3 percent of its 1.3 billion population. It is currently facing a devastating second wave, with coronavirus claiming at least 318,000 lives since the start of the pandemic according to official figures. Media and independent agencies say, however, that the death toll may be several times higher. “India’s vaccination program is robust and by December we will be able to vaccinate over 100 crore Indians (1 billion),” Information Minister Prakash Javadekar told a press conference. His announcement came as the country’s vaccination rate slowed in the past few weeks to 2 million people a day, compared with between 3.5 million and 4 million people last month. “The Health Ministry last week made it clear that within December the nation will produce 216 crore (2.16 billion) doses of COVID-19 vaccines, which means that at least 108 crore people will be able to get their jabs,” Javadekar said. The country is currently relying on two “made in India” jabs. Covishield is the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII), while the local Covaxin is produced by Bharat Biotech. Until April, the SII and Bharat Biotech were able to produce 64 million doses a month. With the government announcing monetary support for the companies, they are expected to be able to produce 120 million doses a month starting from August. As the number of doses produced may be insufficient to cover the now 900 million people eligible for vaccination, the government in April approved the use of Sputnik V, which Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology is going to start producing in India from July. While the Russian drug maker plans to produce only 100 million doses a year, India is in talks with other countries to import the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and other available vaccines. Both health experts and politicians, however, are not optimistic about the government’s success in reaching the new vaccination target as it has already missed earlier ones. When India started its vaccination drive it had the target of inoculating 300 million people above the age of 45 and frontline health care workers. However, by April it was able to vaccinate only 112 million. On Friday, the opposition Congress party blamed the government for having no vaccination strategy. “The problem is that there is no vaccination strategy,” Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told a press conference. “If vaccinations continue at this rate, we will have a third and fourth wave because the virus will mutate.” Prof. Rama Baru, from the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Center of Social Medicine and Community, said that opening the market to foreign vaccines would not solve the crisis as most of them would not be available until July and August. “The planning for vaccination preparedness has been poor since January,” he told Arab News. “There was enough data to suggest that there would be a second wave, but we were not prepared both in terms of prevention and hospitals. The major bottleneck has been estimating the supply of vaccines. The plan for unrolling of vaccines was poorly managed and hence the coverage was very low. When the second wave struck, the vaccine supply shortfall was apparent and the center was a mute spectator.”