PUNE, India – India began on Saturday one of the most ambitious and complex initiatives in its history: the national launch of coronavirus vaccines for 1.3 billion people, an undertaking that will extend from the dangerous Himalayas to the dense jungles of the southern tip country.
The campaign is running in a country that has reported more than 10.5 million coronavirus infections, the second highest number of cases after the United States, and 152,093 deaths, the third highest count in the world.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi started the vaccination campaign on Saturday with a live speech on television, while 3,000 centers across the country were to vaccinate a first round of health workers.
“Everyone was asking when the vaccine will be available,” said Modi. “It is already available. I congratulate all the countrymen on this occasion. “
The government expected to inoculate about 300,000 people on Saturday, but government data showed that 165,000 people were vaccinated. The plan is to give the vaccine to millions more healthcare professionals and first-line professionals by spring.
At Kamala Nehru Hospital in Pune, a city of about 3.1 million southeast of Mumbai, 100 long-stemmed red roses were stacked neatly on a table next to a bottle of hand sanitizer. Each person registered to receive the Covishield vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, based in Pune, would receive a rose.
Covishield and another vaccine called Covaxin were authorized for emergency use in India this month.
Neither Covaxin’s manufacturer, Bharat Biotech, nor the Indian Medical Research Council, which contributed to the development of the vaccine, published data proving that it works. In a Covaxin consent form at Aundh District Hospital, one of several locations in Pune where the vaccine was being administered, the manufacturer noted that clinical efficacy “has not yet been established”.
Dr. Rajashree Patil, one of the health professionals who received the Covishield vaccine at Kamala Nehru Hospital, said she was excited and nervous. After contracting the coronavirus while working in the emergency room at the government hospital in May, she spent 12 days in a Covid ward in another hospital, having lost her sense of smell and taste and experiencing extreme fatigue.
“I’m a little concerned. We are actually doing a test, ”said Patil. “But I am happy that we are managing to get rid of the corona one day.”
Another doctor who received the Covishield vaccine at that hospital, Usha Devi Bharmal, said she wanted to get an injection to dispel people’s fears about coronavirus vaccines. “There are rumors on social media,” she said, adding that she hoped to help show that vaccines are a “positive thing”.
Mr. Modi has pledged to inoculate 300 million health and frontline professionals, including police and, in some cases, teachers, by July. But so far the Indian government has bought just 11 million doses of Covishield and 5.5 million doses of Covaxin.
Indian television stations showed Dr. Randeep Guleria, director of the Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi and an important government adviser at Covid-19, receiving an injection on Saturday. It is not clear whether Mr. Modi was vaccinated.
India’s launch, among the first in a large developing country, comes when millions of people in the United States, Britain, Israel, Canada and the European Union have received at least one dose.
India’s vaccination effort faces several obstacles, including a growing sense of complacency with the coronavirus. After reaching a peak of more than 90,000 new cases a day in mid-September, the country’s official infection rates have dropped dramatically. Fatalities have fallen by about 30% in the past 14 days, according to a New York Times database.
The city streets are busy. Air and train travel has resumed. Patterns of social detachment and wearing masks, already loose in many parts of India, have dropped further. This alarms experts, who say the actual rate of infection is probably much worse than official figures suggest.