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Even as India's first indigenous coronavirus vaccine Covaxin is entering its third phase of human trials, Bharat Biotech on Monday, 16 November, raised the logistical query on "how to vaccinate 1.3 billion (130 crore) people with two injectable doses. Terming the exercise a "challenge", it added that work was on single-dose nasal drop vaccine.
Bharat Biotech International Limited (BBIL) Chairman and Managing Director Krishna Ella said the company's Bio-Safety Level 3 (BSL-3) facility currently has limited capacity but hoped to reach one billion (100 crore) doses by next year.
Ella was addressing the Deccan Dialogue organised by the Indian School of Business (ISB) and supported by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on 'Crisis and cooperation: Imperative in the times of pandemic'.
The Hyderabad-headquartered vaccine maker announced in September that it is collaborating with the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, to manufacture a billion doses of a single-dose intranasal vaccine.
"The challenge is to vaccinate 1.3 billion population. Six billion (600 crore) people in the developing world have to be vaccinated but the opportunity is if 20 percent of them are vaccinated, I have done my job as a scientist. You partly need vaccine because there will be herd immunity," he added.
Ella also pointed out that 40,000 unknown viruses are existing. "10,000 viruses can hop from animal to animal and to human. What we are seeing today is only a sample. Because of its impact on economy it got more attention. We are yet to see lot many things."
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad's Prof M Vidyasagar, who is also the chairman of the 'COVID-19 Indian National Supermodel Committee', however, said that for this pandemic, 30 to 40 percent people needed to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.
"The challenge is whether the cold weather, especially in north India, exacerbate this pandemic and whether we can predict this by observing the course of the pandemic," he said.
"These countries have gone back to second lockdown because they see so-called second wave. This raises the question could proper modeling have helped these countries to foresee that there will be second wave, whether it could have helped the countries to assess effectiveness of the first lockdown, would the second lockdown be more effective this time when it was apparently not successful the last time," said Prof Vidyasagar.
Arti Ahuja, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said that India should be proud of what it has done to deal with the pandemic.
Rahul Chabra, Secretary, Economic Relations, Ministry of External Affairs, said that the pandemic brought out new aspects of non-military threats to the security. Health security came up as major issue and multilateral cooperation now has to be part of strategic foreign policy engagement with all countries.
Vikram K Doraiswamy, India's High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Prof Sarang Deo, Executive Director, Max Institute of Healthcare Management, ISB also addressed the session, which was moderated by Govindraj Ethiraj, Founder, IndiaSpend and BOOM.
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