India will focus on 'smart vaccination' to sever chain of virus transmission: ICMR

Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said that India will witness a smart vaccination drive as every citizen will not be vaccinated. Dr Samiran Panda, scientist and head of epidemiology and communicable disease division at the ICMR in an interview with ETV Covishield and Covaxin are safe, sidelining all controversy regarding efficacy data. A report by Gautam Debroy.

New Delhi: As India chalked out its mega strategy to roll out the Covid19 vaccination drive on Saturday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Thursday said that not every citizen will be vaccinated. The apex medical research institute said that neither children nor pregnant women will be vaccinated too in near future.

Talking to ETV Bharat in an exclusive interview, Dr Samiran Panda, scientist and head of epidemiology and communicable disease division at the ICMR said that it is going to be a smart vaccination drive "rather than mass vaccination."

Dr Panda shared the government's strategy behind selecting three categories of people in the first phase of vaccination.

"It's a smart vaccination plane rather than mass vaccination. The science behind the vaccination rollout is that how do you vaccinate a critical mass so that the chain of transmission get intercepted," he said and added "the idea is not that each and every Indian should get the vaccine. The goal is to finally intercept the chain of transmission and also ensure that elderly people do not get infected," Panda said.

The Government has chalked out a priority plan to vaccinate first where health care workers will come first followed by frontline workers and people above and below 50 years of age with co-morbidities.

"The priority group will be vaccinated first. Neither pregnant women nor children will be vaccinated for now. They are not part of the vaccination plan. We have to carefully observe the situation and see that how does the epidemic go," said Dr Panda.

"Our mission is to create a protective fence surrounding children so that they do not get infected," he said.

The ICMR scientist said that there is a need for a proper study on the sufficient number of children before getting them vaccinated.

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"When we talk about women, we not only talk about a single person, we also talk about a baby who is in the womb...so we need to carefully study the possible side effects of vaccination on a particular group of people," Dr Panda said.

He exuded confidence that both Covishield and Covaxin are safe, sidelining all controversy regarding efficacy data of Covaxin.

"Bharat Biotech has a very good record in terms of vaccine development, Rotavirus being an example. The safety and immunogenicity data comes from phase I and II trial of a Vaccine...so we are confident that both the vaccines are safe," said Dr Panda.

Quoting scientific evidence, he said that COVAXIN has the capacity to fight the new virus strain. He further said that the drug regulator keeps doing the post-marketing authorisation surveillance.

"Phase 4 post-marketing surveillance picked up a rare adverse event. And of the adverse event are such that it requires withdrawing medicine, it's taking place...large scale use could bring adverse event," said Dr Panda.

He, however, ruled out any safety concern in case of Covishield and Covaxin as both the vaccines have been brought out following proper scientific evidence."

In fact, the central government has also chalked out a strategy to look out for any adverse event following Covid19 vaccination and asked the states to prepare for the same.

When asked whether vaccine manufacturers would face a shortage of volunteers for different phases of vaccine trial following rolling out of two Covid19 vaccines in India, Dr Panda ruled out such possibility.

"It's not necessary that every trial need to be as big as phase III trial with 20-30,000 volunteers. The could be bridging studies also where a large number of people being volunteered in a trial and later on Indian Pharma company carry on that trial in India," he said.

SII's Covishield is a bridging study, Dr Panda said.

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