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

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

"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," the report has said.

February 24, 2023 / 10:37 IST
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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.
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.

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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”.

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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