COVID-19 Updates: India crosses 10 million

by Zaid Aleem

India becomes the second country in the world to cross the grim 10 million confirmed coronavirus cases milestone. However, new infections are dipping to their lowest levels in three months. The Health Ministry on Saturday also reported 347 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the total numbers of fatalities to 145,136, according to the Associated Press. 

In the past 24 hours, additional cases have fallen to 25,152 from a high of nearly 100,000 in mid-September. Almost 1 percent of India’s more than 1.3 billion people have been affected by the disease, second to the worst-hit United States. Compared to the trend in the United States, where the winter months have wreaked havoc in some of the most populous states and overburdened the healthcare systems, this is a sharp contrast.

India also aims to lift itself out of the crisis with a huge vaccination campaign in the coming months – covering almost as many people as the entire U.S. population in its first stage. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has identified 300 million individuals to obtain the first doses of the vaccines, according to CNN. The priority group is made up of 30 million health care workers, policemen, soldiers and volunteers, and 270 million vulnerable people — mostly citizens above the age of 50 and 10 million others with serious comorbidities.

Producers of three leading candidates for coronavirus vaccines have applied for an emergency use authorization, both of which require two doses in order to provide appropriate immunity. That adds up to a total of 600 million shots, a target the government of Modi would like to achieve by August.

This is an extremely ambitious undertaking, especially in the case of a developing world with weak rural infrastructure and an insufficient public health system, which is already buckling under tremendous coronavirus pressure. 

India still has its own benefits, however. As a global vaccine manufacturing center, its mass production lines will manufacture coronavirus vaccines faster and cheaper than most other countries — produced either by Western pharmaceutical companies or domestically.

When it comes to the actual vaccination process, India already has a vast, established network under its Universal Immunization Program, which inoculates about 55 million people per year. 

“Every single Indian who needs to be vaccinated will be vaccinated,” Indian Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said at a news conference on Dec. 8.