COVID‐19 vaccination strategies and policies in India: The need for further re‐evaluation is a pressing priority

Abstract

India is one of the worst‐hit nations by the COVID‐19 pandemic and witnessed a devastating impact across cities in the country. Although behavioral measures like wearing a face mask, maintaining social distance, and hand hygiene helped to control the spread of the disease initially, but a long‐term action by vaccinating the population is a promising solution. On 16 January 2021, India undertook the challenge to vaccinate 300 million people by August 2021 against COVID‐19, the largest vaccination campaign globally. India has been lauded by several prominent organizations around the world for its efforts. But catering to India's massive population is not without its own set of complex challenges. As of 29 July 2021, a mere 9.82 million (approximately 7.03 percent of the total Indian population) people have been fully vaccinated against COVID‐19 with the first and second dose, and only 352.5 million (roughly 25.28 percent of the total Indian population) have been partly vaccinated with the first dose. This shows, India's current COVID‐19 vaccination policies and plans are still inadequate and not undisputedly equitable even after several amendments in the guidelines. However, even with the second wave abating slowly and steadily in India, there is a need to further re‐strategize the current vaccination policy and plans in India against COVID‐19 to help achieve long‐term positive outcomes in the shortest feasible time frame hoping to evade a third wave.

Men are the main COVID-19 transmitters: behavior or biology?

“…COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant number of deaths worldwide, but the prevalence of comorbidities [ 7 , 8 ], lower education levels, socioeconomic inequalities as the healthcare system inexperience to deal with the pandemic [ 9 , 10 ] contributed to the increase of COVID-19 cases and deaths in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) [ 11 – 13 ]. Most of these countries still show inadequate vaccination programs, lack of an accurate and rapid diagnosis as well as poor viral surveillance [ 10 , 14 – 16 ], contributing for the emergence of COVID-19 waves and new SARS-CoV-2 variants [ 17 , 18 ].…”

Mutation induced infection waves in diseases like COVID-19

“…Therefore, to prevent possible mutation-induced long-time consequences it is imperative to maximize vaccine production worldwide. redEnhancing vaccine production is particularly important in countries with a weak healthcare system, which face the threat of being overloaded by COVID-19 cases [54][55][56][57][58][59] .…”

COVID-19 waves: variant dynamics and control

“…The alarming rise of novel coronavirus variants necessitates genomic surveillance for early anticipation and initiation of mitigation strategies to contain such outbreaks 7 . Problems connected with vaccine hesitancy and the availability and distribution of vaccines in the poorest countries must be countered with systematic vaccination policies and plans 8 , 9 . Therefore, it is important to mathematically and objectively analyze the underlying factors that fuel these subsequent surges in infections and possible mitigation strategies.…”