Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, May 17: Even as the daily new cases dropped further coming down below three lakh mark for the first time in more than three weeks on Monday, the World health Organisation scientist of Indian origin has cautioned India again being complacent and said much would depend on the efforts put in the next six to 18 months.
The WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan, who is keeping a very close eye on the developing situation in her homeland, predicted that there could be more waves of the pandemic but efforts put in the next six to 18 months “will be most critical in battling the pandemic,” she said.
“A lot depends also on the evolution of the virus itself, the ability of vaccines to keep up with variants, and it also depends on the duration of protective immunity of vaccines. A lot of this is changing,” she said but cautioned against dropping the guard as was the case after the first wave.
The Indian Medical Association lamented that India was losing more medical practitioners to Covid in the second wave than in the first.
According to the Indian Medical Association (IMA) registry, 244 deaths have been recorded in the second wave with the youngest physician who died being Dr. Anas Mijahid, 25, from Delhi and the oldest being Dr. Anil Kumar Rakshit, 87, Kolkata.
Bihar recorded the highest number of 69 doctors to have died due to Covid in the second wave so far followed by Uttar Pradesh (34) and Delhi (27).
“While last year we lost nearly 730 doctors across India, this year in a short period of time we have lost 244 doctors. The second wave is proving extremely fatal for all and especially those at the forefront of the battle. We have to actively increase vaccination cover among the medical staff to ensure that they have protection against the virus,’’ the IMA said.
The fatalities among the doctors in other states included Andhra Pradesh (21), Telangana (19), Maharashtra (13), Tamil Nadu (10), Karnataka and Odisha (8 each), Madhya Pradesh (5), Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir (3 each), Assam, Gujarat, Haryana and Kerala (2 each) and Goa (1).
The Health Ministry on Monday said the Central government has so far provided more than 20 crore vaccine doses (20,76,10,230) to States/UTs, free of cost. Of this, the total consumption, calculated based on average up to May 16 including wastages, is 18,71,13,705 doses (as per data available at 8 a.m. on Monday).
The government has allayed the apprehensions about post-vaccination problems in India pointing out that the complaints of bleeding and clotting cases following Covid vaccination were minuscule and in line with the expected number of diagnoses of these conditions in the country, a report submitted by the National AEFI Committee to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.
It was pointed out that more than 13.4 crore doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the country as on April 27 and the reporting rate of bleeding and clotting was around 0.61/million doses, which was much lower than the 4 cases/million reported by UK’s regulator Medical and Health Regulatory Authority (MHRA). Germany has reported 10 events per million doses,” the report said.
“There were no potential thromboembolic events reported following administration of Covaxin vaccine,” it added.
More than 23,000 adverse events through the CoWin platform were reported by 684 districts of the 753 of them in the country, since the beginning of the Covid-19 drive, as of April 3. Only 700 cases of these cases (9.3 cases /million doses administered) were reported to be serious and of severe nature, according to the report.
After completing an in-depth case review of 498 serious and severe events, the AEFI committee said that 26 of them have been reported to be potential thromboembolic events.
The in-depth analysis of the adverse events in India post-Covid-19 vaccination was conducted after global concerns were raised for “embolic and thrombotic events” in relation to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. Many European nations halted their vaccination drives as reports of people developing rare blood clots after the administration of the vaccine started surfacing.
Out of the total of more than 20 million vaccine doses administered in the United Kingdom, MHRA, the country’s medical regulator reported 79 cases of the adverse event, of which 19 died, as of April 26, reported BBC.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine is produced in India by the Serum Institute of India in Pune and administered as Covishield.
The national AEFI committee’s report suggested that the thromboembolic events keep taking place in the general population, but this risk is almost 70% less in people of south and southeast Asian descent as compared to people from European descent.
Meanwhile, the entre claimed that more than two crore COVID-19 vaccine doses were still available with the states and Union territories, while nearly three lakh doses are in the pipeline and will be received by them within the next three days, the Union health ministry said.
The Centre has so far provided over 20 crore (20,76,10,230) vaccine doses to the states and Union territories for free. Of this, the total consumption, calculated on the basis of average figures, up to May 16, including wastage, is 18,71,13,705 doses (according to data available at 8 am on Monday), it added.
“More than two crore COVID-19 vaccine doses (2,04,96,525) are still available with the states and UTs to be administered,” the Ministry said.
Furthermore, 2,94,660 vaccine doses are in the pipeline and will be received by the states within the next three days, it said.
Meanwhile, the Delhi High Court reserved judgment on plea seeking temporary suspension of work on Central Vista construction considering the coronavirus situation. The centre has strongly opposed the Public Interest Litigation demanding postponement of the project construction for some weeks till the pandemic situation improved.
In another alarming development, a private hospital in Haridwar allegedly withheld information about deaths of 65 COVID-19 patients from the health authorities for over a fortnight in violation of the norms, officials said on Monday. Cabinet Minister and state government spokesman Subodh Uniyal said the matter is being probed and appropriate legal action will be taken against those responsible for the negligence.
Sixty-five COVID-19 patients died at Baba Barfani Hospital between April 25 and May 12 but the facility hid the figure from the State COVID Control Room here, officials said.