The inefficient and fragmented buying strategy brought about by the current policy will only delay the inoculation process. The Centre and states must act as one.
If you are 18 years or older, you can get a COVID-19 vaccine from May 1
If you are 18 years or older, you can get a COVID-19 vaccine from May 1
Sriram IyerApr 19, 2021, 19:49 IST
FILE PHOTO
The government of India has made a major policy change allowing everyone above the age of 18 to get a jab of the COVID-19 vaccine from May 1, as India opens up the third phase of the world’s largest vaccination drive.
To improve the supply of the COVID-19 vaccine, the government has allowed states to directly buy them from the manufacturers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a Press Information Bureau statement, said that the “government has been working hard from over a year to ensure that maximum number of Indians are able to get the vaccine in the shortest possible of (sic) time.”
Overcoming formidable biological and sociocultural barriers, India eliminated wild polioviruses from its territory in January 2011. Looking back, it is obvious that the best policy would have been to introduce the inactivated poliovirus vaccine to prevent polio in every vaccinated child, and to use oral poliovirus vaccine by pulse campaigns to eliminate WPVs rapidly. This would have eliminated polio decades ago. Now that WPVs have been eliminated, IPV must be introduced as a prelude to withdrawing OPV. The road ahead is bumpy, but with the important lessons learnt so far, India can no longer pretend that it is too difficult to design a permanent public health infrastructure to control other communicable and non-communicable diseases.