An indecisive leader or one heading a coalition govt probably couldn't have done it like this.
A coalition gov would have been faster to act just because they have to take care of the people or face a major backlash. We paid a heavy price for this "decisive" leader!
I am not going into how the supporters of the gov behaved with people who lost family...all because they wanted to protect the image of the government!
Not even a single press conference was given when people needed some empathy, leadership or assurance. Imagine, the scenario in USA or Germany where thousands are dying every day, and the top brass of the country has nothing to say.
The government not only played a largely passive role, but they did not even assist where they could. Before the second wave, Serum Institute was appealing for financial help to boost production capacity. But the government completely neglected that, choosing to prop up covaxin, their homegrown vaccine instead.
Even as the government was petitioning WHO to open up vaccine IPs, they refused to open up the IP for their own covaxin to domestic manufacturers, instead ensuring exclusive access to a company that is very "close" to the party.
What saved India in the end was a strong pharma/health industry enabling local manufacturing and ready distribution network for the vaccine. Serum Institute was already the world's largest vaccine manufacturer and was in an amazing position to take up the Oxford vaccine. They jumped at it with all hands and today account for 90% of all doses administered. It's a shame that the rest of the industry doesn't have a bigger share, they certainly have the capability. India is like top 3 in the world in pharma manufacturing. Many companies were ready and willing to switch to vaccine manufacturing but were tied up in bureaucracy with no support from the government.
Political will was the need of the hour, the government had none and it certainly shows in the outcome. Bad leaders always seem to enjoy something of a stockholm syndrome where they are forgiven and admired for everything once the dust settles. People forget how bad the second wave was, and how bad the decisions of the government leading into it. If not for Serum Institute and the strength of the pharma industry, India would have easily gone down the path of Brazil for the kind of shithousery the government pulled.
This is not true - the govt gave Rs. 3000 crore (the asked-for amount) in aid to SII.
> They jumped at it with all hands and today account for 90% of all doses administered.
True, but it's likely that the government's commitment to buy 100s of millions of vaccines played no small part in giving them the confidence to scale up the way they did.
> India is like top 3 in the world in pharma manufacturing
True, but SII is the big daddy of vaccines. Even before Covid, they were making 60% of the entire world's supply of vaccines.
> Many companies were ready and willing to switch to vaccine manufacturing but were tied up in bureaucracy with no support from the government.
SII had the capability and capacity, and committed to deliver the quantity as well. They had started manufacturing Covishield in the millions as early as November 2020 or so. Bharat (Covaxin) had a fully developed vaccine. Under the circumstances, why would the government (or any other buyer) risk spreading itself thin over many different suppliers instead of going with those which already had a product in hand?
Sarcasm aside, look at the economy: >-20% dip in pandemic. Heck even Pakistan manages to keep its haad above the water. And Bangladesh has more per capita income.
But hey, Bhakti is what bhakt do.
I have family in India, and they have no hesitation to get the vaccines. It just wasn't available for very long. India insisted on a seaparate Indian trial from Pfizer which almost eliminated access to those for Indians. Only to embarrassingly withdraw such requirement and allow them back as cases spiked.
And everyone from the Central Board of Secondary Education to state owned enterprises were made to put up posters thanking Modiji for the vaccines. Because you, know he's funding them personally, not us taxpayers. Even the goddamn vaccination certificate has his smug face plastered on it. So, let's not pretend he's not taking credit for it.
My wife and I are under 40 and we got the vaccine for free at a government health centre.
> Instead, states were pitted against each other to procure doses
Initially all vaccine supply was routed through the centre. Then some states like Delhi and Maharashtra asked to be allowed to procure vaccines on their own. This was in the early days when the vaccine supply was less. When they didn't get any interest from sellers they again asked the centre to procure it for them [1][2]. By then SII (Covishield) in particular had scaled up sufficiently to be able to supply enough vaccines.
1. https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/delhi/2021/may/27/ke...
2. https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/uddhav-thackeray...
Covid was an event of unimaginable proportions which affected every Indian and I believe any Indian leader would have done same or even more than what Modi’s government did provided India was already a leader in vaccination logistics and vaccine production even before Modi came to power. For all the good said about current vaccination numbers, they are well below than what could have been achieved had Modi govt. acted in a more timely manner and played the international vaccine politics better. Over committing Vaccine production to the outside world, delaying the immunization drive because of unnecessary red-tape and toxic nationalism, delaying the deployment of well tested Moderna and Pfizer vaccines forever but approving locally designed vaccine Covaxin even before its phase three trials were over, overblowing the vaccination numbers on some designated dates to create “single day vaccination records” while creating shortage on other dates at the same are all blots on this vaccination drive.
- How India's vaccine drive went horribly wrong: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57007004
- India could see over 1 million Covid deaths by August due to Modi’s “self-inflicted national catastrophe”: https://qz.com/india/2006872/lancet-editorial-blames-modi-fo...
- The Indian government's failed vaccine drive has caused thousands of Indians to needlessly die - https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/the-india...
- Modi’s Vaccination Fumbles Leave India Behind in Race Against COVID-19: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/16/modi-vaccine-failures-i...
- Fix botched vaccination, reduce transmission to end current crisis: The Lancet to India: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/fix-botch...
- Narendra Modi fails India's vaccine test: https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Narendra-Modi-fails-India-s-...
- Modi Backtracks on India Vaccine Drive After Intense Criticism: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-07/india-to-vaccinate-citizens-above-18-in-covid-fight-modi-says
- Complacency and Missteps Deepen a Covid-19 Crisis in India: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/world/asia/india-covid-va...
- The Guardian view on Modi’s mistakes: a pandemic that is out of control: https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/apr/23/...
- Modi’s liberalised vaccination policy is a mistake that other countries avoided: https://caravanmagazine.in/health/modi-liberalised-vaccinati...
It took Supreme Court of India's criticism for this government to finally get their act in order on Covid Vaccination Program.
The more accurate number is 290 million, which is how many people have got both doses. Our population is 1.3 billion, so we're still a long way away.
And every dose, be it the first or the second, has to be produced, bought, shipped and administered to a Human being who has been convinced to take it...
26.16% of that are children. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/271315/age-distribution-...)
So, about 1 Billion require 2 doses of vaccination.
Out of that 1 Billion are almost done.
A long way to go, but an impressive journey so far.
Assuming you mean 1b have had at least 1 dose, I don't think that's true. If 1b doses have been given, and ~300m people have had 2 doses (i.e. consumed 600m doses), that surely means ~400m doses were left. So a total of 700m people have had one or more doses.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-india-...
> India’s daily vaccinations surpassed 10 million doses on Friday, with national vaccine production more than doubling since April and set to rise again in the coming weeks.²
0: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-covid-vaccinat...
1: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-19-vaccinatio...
2: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/30/india-covid-vaccine...
Yes, China is far ahead of India, but Cuba, the UAE and Urugay are far ahead of China.
Not to discount their success but small countries will always have an easier job than larger ones, since geographic and population scales make everything harder.
I'm pretty sure you can find municipalities of 10-20 million people in China that are more vaccinated that UAE or Cuba.
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...
As far as I have read China heavily locks down regions if covid flares emerge, tests everyone in the region within a few days, then opens everything up less than a week later. This doesn't fit to the way more laissez-faire approach in the West.
Those are Sino* vaccines, which are only about 51% effective. (WHO considers 50% to be ineffective.)
>Total Vaccination Doses: 1,00,13,38,625
Is that an Indian thing?
So the comma separation reflects the words, as in English.
> 38,625
38 hazaar ... Vs. 38 thousand ...
> 13,38,625 vs. 1,338,625
13 lakh ... Vs. 1.3 million ...
> 1,00,13,38,625 vs. 1,001,338,625
100 crore Vs. 1.0 billion
This would no doubt be an entry in a hypothetical 'falsehoods programmers believe about numbers'! I.e. use things like Intl.NumberFormat in the browser, rather than home-grown 'group 3 digits and insert a comma then join again'.
(* yes, I'm going to conveniently ignore 'hundred' and its occasional/domain use like 'twelve hundred'.)
It's not only in English, as far as I know it's almost everywhere else, the entire Western world plus its former colonies and I think even places like China.
The Indian subcontinent is the exception.
That home grown solution wouldn’t work in many western countries either, where comma is a decimal separator and dot/period is the thousands separator.
After thousand, numbers are usually grouped by the hundreds.
So, for example, Indians usually use:
Number: Indian Term/Others 1000: Thousand/Thousand 100,000: Lac/Hundred Thousand 1,000,000: 10 Lac/Million 1,00,00,000: Crore/Ten Million
and so on…
10 lakh = 1 million
100 lakh = 1 crore
100 - Hundred 1,000 - Thousand 1,00,000 - Lakh 1,00,00,000 - Crore
We don't use millions here.
Only one country has reached 90%. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
How is the UAE doing compared to other countries?
Mask wearing( atleast properly ) was maybe 40-50%. Countries like Oman with lower vaccination rates felt much safer because everyone seemed to take mask wearing much more seriously.
Are we talking about the whole population or only eligible people?
Misleading, disingenuous, mendacious title. They're clearly counting _up_.
