With the country expected to hit the record 200 crore Covid vaccinations mark by the end of this month, union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya told News18 that it was the inoculation drive that “saved India” and the nation was able to avoid nearly 90 per cent of fatalities.
About 5.25 lakh people have died in India due to Covid, with a fatality rate of 1.2 per cent, which is much lesser than the developed nations. India has carried out over 198 crore vaccinations to date.
“We were able to avoid 90 per cent fatalities and that’s our biggest achievement. The vaccination drive saved India. Otherwise, in other countries people were dying even in the third wave,” Mandaviya told News18 in Delhi on Thursday.
The number of deaths in countries like the United States and in Europe was high during the third wave as well earlier this year. However, India did not suffer the same fate.
“In the third wave, our fatality was low because we were 75 per cent vaccinated (coverage) by then. A recent study has said that over four million deaths were avoided in India due to high vaccination,” the union health minister said, referring to a report published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal in June.
Big strides
About 35 crore vaccinations had been done in India till exactly a year ago when Mandaviya had taken over as the health minister. The inoculation drive has since seen big strides, rising to 198 crore-plus vaccinations as of today with 92 crore people fully vaccinated and 4.72 crore precaution doses being given. “In the journey towards 200 crore vaccinations, there were multiple times when we even crossed one crore vaccinations done in a single day,” Mandaviya told News18.
Ahead of the third wave hitting India, close monitoring was done at the union health ministry with daily morning meetings chaired by Mandaviya with the Prime Minister’s scientific adviser, secretaries of health, pharma, and department of biotechnology, the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) chairman, and other leading experts. They were all given specific tasks to study international developments, vaccination updates, the status of medicines to ensure no crisis emerged and focus a lot on genome sequencing.
A new subvariant, BA.2.75, of the Omicron variant of Covid has been detected in India, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday. Mandaviya said India now has a very strong surveillance system at the ground level to keep itself abreast of the strains and be prepared. “Our surveillance is very strong as we are doing genome sequencing from the district level which keeps us updated on the prevalent strains,” he told News18.
‘New subvariant not a cause of worry’
A source in the health ministry said that after the main variant Omicron, subvariants are not that effective and mostly lead to minor fever and fizzle away. “It is like minor influenza which comes on change of season,” the source said, adding that Covid-19 in India is almost in the endemic stage now.
The source said the decision to reduce the gap between the second dose and the booster/precaution dose to six months from nine months as earlier, has been done on an NTAGI recommendation and scientific advice. “Precaution dose is especially beneficial for vulnerable people,” the ministry source said.
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