Celebrating 1 year of the national vaccination drive, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated today that India’s approach to fighting the pandemic will always remain science-based. This was evident from the very beginning, as last year Emergency Use Authorisation was granted to two “Made in India” vaccines namely, Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. Then Nationwide rollout of Vaccination began for doctors, healthcare workers, frontline workers including Safai Karamcharis which later on got extended to all adults in stages and even to the adolescent population this year. To ensure gender parity in the Nationwide vaccination drive, the government has made concentrated efforts due to which a total of 49% Females and 51% males have received vaccine doses till date.
As we take stock of the last one year, India is leading the world with its fastest vaccination pace. It has not been an easy journey – the sudden nature of the pandemic, the need for tough and far-reaching decisions amidst a lot of conflicting, incomplete and even wrong information were clearly baffling all across the globe. Further, huge population and consequent shortage of supply at the initial stage together with the need for Government procurement and large scale deployment, including the issue of vaccine hesitancy came as added problems.
PM Modi led from the front in tackling these challenges, especially in engagements for clear communication to create awareness about vaccine safety and building trust. His images from the AIIMS vaccination site, perhaps, boosted the confidence of citizens to go and get vaccinated.
The success of crossing over 155 crores administered doses within a year is a testament to the large scale project deployment capabilities of “New India”. Clear communication from leaders and experts has played a pivotal role in achieving this staggering level of vaccination, esp. in combating fake news and bringing down vaccine hesitancy. To know its importance one can look at the USA where governments had to announce lotteries, scholarships, saving bonds and even cash payouts to encourage people to shed fear and resistance to vaccines.
This success is not only about producing, procuring, distributing and administering vaccines. The needed healthcare infrastructure spending was a big ask. This coupled with extending the availability of food to a large percentage of the population, making provisions to support businesses to get back to production and operations as soon as possible are testaments of a country ready for large scale deployments. There is a lot to be done towards the economic recovery of MSMEs, the rural economy and the poor in the cities – the ones very badly affected by the pandemic and its handling in the form of lockdowns. India is ready and on track to overcome these challenges and make the 2020s a Decisive Decade of Growth.
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