New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has approached the private sector to take stock of the number of vaccinators available as it does the groundwork for the eventual rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine, likely next year.
If, according to the government’s plan, three crore doctors and healthcare workers are vaccinated in the first phase, it could mean substantial additional work for the 70,000 vaccinators who currently work under the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP), giving 11 vaccines to an annual birth cohort of 2.64 crore children and to pregnant mothers.
ThePrint had earlier reported that the Modi government has kickstarted the process of creating a database of workers in healthcare facilities for administering the Covid vaccine as soon as it becomes available.
“The National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19 is in touch with FICCI and CII to get a sense of how many vaccinators are available with hospitals/chains which are part of these two organisations,” said a senior health ministry official.
The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) are industry bodies with representation across industries, including health and pharma.
“We are also separately reaching out to corporate hospital chains that are not a part of FICCI or CII to get a sense of the number of vaccinators we can have. We have asked for the number of trainees they get every year who can be spared for vaccination duties. We are also looking at using the digital iGOT platform to train new vaccinators — it should not be difficult with one or two physical sessions,” the official added.
iGOT or Integrated Govt Online training portal is a platform is for the capacity building of frontline workers to handle the pandemic efficiently. The portal has added many new courses since the beginning of the pandemic to cater to the new workforce demands and to ensure that the restricted mobility does not restrict optimum utilisation of resources.
Currently, mother and child vaccinations are carried out by auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs), lady health visitors (supervisors of ANMs), nurses and doctors. However, there are concerns within the government about diverting manpower from UIP given that there have been immunisation gaps in many states due to lockdown restrictions, and long-term disruptions could mean a rise in child deaths over time.
In a letter to states and Union Territories in October, the government had said that administration of Covid vaccine could take up to a year.
“Theoretically every doctor, nurse, dentist is a vaccinator. So, managerially, it is not the skill that is a matter of concern. It is the volume because diverting existing vaccinators to Covid would disrupt not just childhood immunisation, but also routine primary care, TB care, functioning of health and wellness centres. That is something we do not want because we have already seen substantial disruptions in routine healthcare in the early stages of the pandemic, especially during the lockdown,” said a member of the expert group on Covid, speaking on condition of anonymity.
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‘No dialogue with Pfizer so far’
While pharma giant Pfizer is hoping that its mRNA-based vaccine candidate, BNT162b2 would emerge as one of the key weapons in India’s anti-Covid arsenal, the government remains unimpressed by the company’s announcement earlier this week that the vaccine has shown 90% efficacy in an interim analysis.
“As was clarified during the Covid briefing on Tuesday, the government of India is in touch with companies which have some sort of regulatory clearance so far, at least in their own countries. Pfizer does not even have that, so why are we even bothering about questions such as whether our cold chains supports minus 80 degrees as the vaccine requires and all that,” said a senior health ministry official closely associated with the negotiations and discussions on the Covid vaccine.
“Why would we talk to them when they have no regulatory approval even in their own country? Frankly speaking, we are much more excited about Indian companies such as Gennova Biopharmaceuticals who are also working on an mRNA vaccine, not to mention others such as Bharat Biotech, Serum Institute of India and Zydus Cadilla,” the official said.
Apart from these four companies, the government is also in touch with Biological E, a Hyderabad-based company.
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