India saved over 3.4 million lives due to unprecedented scale of COVID vaccination: Report

Containing the virus in a nation as populous and diverse as India is a highly arduous task, the latest paper has said.

India has saved more than 3.4 million lives due to unprecedented scale of COVID-19 vaccination, a new working paper by the researchers associated with the Stanford University and the Institute of Competitiveness stated.

A Lancet modelling study estimates that in India around 34,22,00054 deaths were prevented by vaccination in the year 2021, an estimate based on officially reported deaths in India, underlined the paper.

This paper, from which Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya quoted extensively during his participation in Stanford University’s India Dialogue, studied the impact of various interventions vaccine, containment, and relief package to understand the broad impact of the interventions in combating SARS CoV 2.

“Our analysis reveals that the three interventions were useful in combating the virus,” it said. “Although the exact impact – both economic and social – is hard to capture, our paper is an attempt in the direction to map the effects of the interventions that India undertook”.

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Containing the virus in a nation as populous and diverse as India is a highly arduous task, the latest paper has said stressing that it was successful due to the strategy adopted by different regions engaging multiple actors.

“Each of the three strategies -vaccination, containment, and the relief package, was equally important and in conjunction with one other, brought the nation to a post-pandemic era,” said the report.

Mandaviya, in his address at the University event through video conferencing, said that India adopted a ‘whole of government’ & ‘whole of society’ approach, in a proactive, preemptive  and graded manner thus adopting a holistic response strategy, for effective management of COVID-19.

“PM Narendra Modi ji initiated a preemptive response much before COVID-19 was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30th January (2020) by the WHO (World Health Organisation,” tweeted Mandaviya about his address.