ARTICLE | COVID-19 Vaccination
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ndia has over four decades of experience in running national immunity programmes and has also successfully conducted large-scale mass vaccination drives for many years to eradicate Polio from the nation’s soil. India not only emerged competent by creating two homegrown vaccines but also as a leader as it distributed vaccines to several nations. India kicked off its vaccination drive against the COVID-19 pandemic from January 16 this year by announcing the administration of doses to frontline workers, including healthcare workers, on a priority basis, because they remain most exposed to the virus. The next phase of vaccination included vaccinating people above the age of 60 years and people above 45 years of age with comorbid conditions because reports described them as more prone to getting hospitalized if infected by SARS-CoV-2. However, the sudden ‘tsunami’ of coronavirus infections and deaths in India during April 2021 prompted the government to start the third phase of the vaccination drive, including everyone above the age of 18 years in its vaccination programme.
Authorities trying to convince hesitant Indians
India’s two homegrown vaccines driving the world’s largest vaccination programme are Covishield and Covaxin. Both of them have been developed on similar grounds, using inactive or modified versions of the virus, which are to be injected intramuscularly in the upper arm muscles, and work as two-dose vaccines. Covishield vaccine, manufactured and marketed by the Serum Institute of India and developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca, consists of a viral vector vaccine that uses an adenovirus found in chimpanzees, ChAD0x1. This helps deliver spike proteins and mount a tolerable immune response in response to a live virus. Covaxin, on the other hand, is fully made, developed and produced in India by Bharat Biotech and uses an inactive/
36 May 2021 | www.urbanupdate.in
Challenge of information dissemination and ensuring inclusion For the past year, the whole world was hanging by a thread, trying to make sense of the alien, fatal, and cascading virus. Patients, along with the frontline workers, depended on God’s mercy and researchers pushed hard to come up with a cure or a vaccine for COVID-19. By January 2021, many nations had begun their vaccination drive to fight the pandemic, but many continue to struggle Pooja Upadhyay Trainee Reporter
