India can use Aadhaar model to vaccinate 3-5 million people daily: Nandan Nilekani

Nandan Nilekani (Image: PTI)

Infosys co-founder and the brain behind Aadhaar Nandan Nilekani has said the model followed for the 12-digit biometric identity system can help India deploy a “massive vaccination programme that can cover 3-5 million people daily”.

“… we have 1.25 billion people who have a unique Aadhaar identity, we can create a massive vaccination programme. We must ensure that everybody gets a digital certificate with the date of vaccination, name of the vaccine and through which vendor and at what location,” Nilekani told The Economic Times.

He said the Aadhaar model was built to enrol 1.5 million people a day. "We can easily think of building a vaccination system that vaccinates 3-5 million people a day," he said.

If India manages to vaccinate 50-60 percent, it will vaccine-induced herd immunity. "That would be the longer-term solution, I mean four to five months from now,” Nilekani said.

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On the outbreak, he said efforts would have to be “redoubled” and behavioural changes such as wearing of masks and social distancing should continue. Testing, contact-tracing and quarantines would have to continue to suppress the spread.

“We are fortunate that India is the vaccine capital of the world. By January, you should see at least a couple of vaccines in the market. We have amazing firms such as Serum Institute that can make a billion vaccines or more, and six to seven (other) such companies doing domestic research or licensing,” he added.

These companies had the capability to make “100 million vaccines a month”, which would also be sufficient to supply to other countries, Nilekani said.

He was also of the opinion that India stands to gain in the post-COVID-19 world as disruptions had forced the world to look for manufacturing prowess elsewhere, the report said.

Nilekani said the pandemic was a “significant opportunity” for India to emerge as an alternative, even for the US which has a 20-year manufacturing relationship with China.

He acknowledged that India may not be able to do what China has done in terms of creating the great firewall but should instead remain an open economy and create digital public goods such as Aadhaar, UPI and the national digital health mission.