Hopeful New Year: How countries, including India, have prepped for COVID-19 vaccine rollout in 2021

As the New Year promises hope with the development of vaccines against novel coronavirus that struck the planet early last year, countries have been preparing to purchase doses in advance to safeguard their populations.

Over 12 billion doses have been reserved by countries—with confirmed purchases of 8.6 billion doses and another 3.5 billion doses under negotiation—even before they have received market approvals, as on December 29, 2020, data collected by Duke Global Health Innovation Center, suggests.

While some countries have already started vaccinating their population, the Indian government has asked states and union territories to prep for a vaccine rollout by carrying out a dry run on January 2. About 96,000 vaccinators have been trained while 2,360 participants have been trained in National Training of Trainers and over 57,000 participants are trained at district level training in 719 districts.

About nine potential vaccine products are under development in different stages in India, as on December 28, 2020, official data shows.

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COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

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How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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Indian landscape of #COVID__19 vaccines under development (as on 28th December, 2020)#StaySafe #Unite2FightCorona@ICMRDELHI pic.twitter.com/REJcw8iI9u

— #IndiaFightsCorona (@COVIDNewsByMIB) December 31, 2020

On January 1, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) gave its validation to the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which has now become the first vaccine to get the global health agency's nod for emergency use.

Data gathered by Duke Global Health Innovation Centre (GHIC) suggests that India has confirmed the purchase of 1.8 billion doses in the market. Likewise, the European Union has a commitment of 1.58 billion doses and the US that of 1.2 billion doses.

It also further points out inequalities in terms of purchases based on a country’s' economic capacity, saying low-income countries will be left out as “many high-income countries have hedged their bets by advance purchasing enough doses to vaccinate their population several times over.”

Middle-income economies with limited purchasing power are using alternative strategies by negotiating large advance market commitments with leading vaccine candidates as part of the manufacturing agreements, such as India and Brazil. Meanwhile, a country like Peru that has no manufacturing/development capacity but infrastructure to host clinical trials, has used the leverage to negotiate purchase deals, the Duke GHIC release says.

The Serum Institute of India has stockpiled 75 million doses of AstraZeneca-Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine, and will be increasing it to 100 million doses by the first week of January, Moneycontrol reported on December 31.

The Indian government is planning to vaccinate 300 million people in the first wave of vaccination and the first phase will target 10 million frontline health workers by February.