Experts on the vaccination drive: ‘Like expecting a baby, seeing it being born’
2 min read With Prime Minister Narendra Modi rolling out the world’s largest vaccination drive towards the pandemic that has brought on 1,52,093 deaths and upended hundreds of thousands of lives within the nation, specialists—who’ve been spending hours ironing out creases forward of the launch of the inoculation marketing campaign— stated they have been ecstatic and relieved to execute the herculean activity a lot forward of time.
Dr Randeep Guleria, Director of AIIMS and a member of the Covid activity pressure was among the many first ones to take a shot of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin at AIIMS on Saturday. Calling the vaccination programme “a game changer”, he stated, “Before this, we did not have any definite treatment strategy. We were giving a lot of drugs but we didn’t have a good antiviral drug. This is one strategy which is going towards finding an end to the pandemic. The vaccination programme is something which has happened early. When the discussions were going on, people were even thinking of March for getting the vaccine. People have worked extra hard, both in terms of the manufacturers, trials and rolling out the whole process because there was a huge upscaling that was required.”
In August, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) had constituted the National Expert Group on Vaccine administration for Covid-19 (NEGVAC) to supply vaccine steering and mechanism for the supply.
Dr Samiran Panda, Indian Council of Medical Research, Scientist and Head of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases Division and a member of NEGVAC, instructed The Sunday Express “It’s almost like expecting a baby and then seeing the baby being born, but then all the worries are not yet over because the newborn now requires a different kind of care and protection. The vaccine has come into being within 10-11 months of knowing the whole genome sequence of the virus. It is a phenomenal achievement for India. It’s not over yet. Now is the time for us to remain more cautious and see how things go further.”
