As India became the first country in the world to report more than 80,000 new cases of COVID-19 on a single day, the need for a safe and effective vaccine to prevent new infections of the novel coronavirus has been growing as well. However, healthcare experts say we may be overestimating a vaccine’s role in arresting India’s COVID-19 epidemic.
In a joint statement addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, experts of the Indian Public Health Association (IPHA), the Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSM) and the Indian Association of Epidemiologists (IAE) said, “Vaccines have no role in current ongoing pandemic control. However, whenever available, the vaccine may play a role in providing personal protection to high-risk individuals like healthcare workers and elderly with comorbidities.”
“It must be assumed that an effective vaccine would not be available in near future. We must avoid false sense of hope that this panacea is just around the corner,” they added.
This is the third joint statement issued by the same three groups. The last one was in May this year, wherein they accused the government-imposed as being “draconian” and called the state response incoherent. The IPHA and IAPSM put together a joint task force “of eminent public health experts of India” in April 2020 to advise the Centre on COVID-19 containment strategies. The IAE joined this effort later.
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Their statement follows Union health minister Harsh Vardhan’s words last month that the country will have a vaccine by the end of the year. Modi had also said during his Independence Day speech that the country was ready to mass produce three COVID-19 vaccines, once scientists give the go-ahead – presumably a euphemism for clinical trials to conclude. These are COVAXIN, developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech; Ahmedabad-based Zydus Cadila’s vaccine ZyCoV-D; and Pune-based Serum Institute of India’s ChAdOx1-S vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.
The experts also highlighted the need to expedite the establishment of a dedicated, efficient and adequately equipped public health cadre at the Centre and across states – echoing a recommendation of various national committees and expert groups since 1946.
The Wire Science is reproducing their statement in full below.
Source: Science
