New Delhi: Amid a hue and cry over the wastage and unavailability of Covid-19 vaccines in India, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Saturday reiterated its demand to withdraw the age limit criteria for vaccination.
The IMA said that everyone should get a vaccination in the country.
In an exclusive interview with ETV Bharat, IMA president Dr JA Jayalal, said, "The vaccine should be made openly available for the public irrespective of their age group. Whether it is through the public or private sector, people should have access to the vaccination. The accessibility of the vaccine to the community is the need of the hour."
The logic behind IMA's demand to vaccinate all is that the hesitancy among the people of prescribed age criteria led to the wastage of vaccines.
"We must understand why there is a wastage of vaccines. Each vaccine is a 10 dose vial. Once you open the vial, you need to inoculate 10 people. You can't vaccinate people below 45 years of age even though your vaccine is getting wastage," said Dr Jayalal.
"Each vial of the vaccine has an expiry time of 3-4 hours after it gets opened. The wastage percentage will come down drastically once you remove the age criteria," said Dr Jayalal.
The percentage of wastage came down after the government relaxed the age criteria for people to get the vaccination from 65 to 45. Such demands for vaccinating all people have been rejected by the central government citing the fact that priority should be given to the needy people.
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As per statistics, the national average of vaccine waste is 6.5 per cent. However, many states including Telangana (17.6 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (11.6) Uttar Pradesh (9.4), Karnataka (6.9), and Jammu & Kashmir registered 6.6 per cent of vaccine wastage. Vaccine wastage is being reported from almost all the states and UTs.
Through the issue of vaccine wastage can be divided into two different categories (unopened vials and open vials), in India most of the vaccine wastage takes place due to opened vials following lack of beneficiaries on time.
Vaccine wastage through unopened vials takes place mainly due to expiry of date, exposure to heat, freezing of the vaccine, and discarding unused vials returned from the vaccine site.
The temperature in the freezer of the vaccination centres has been made suitable for two Indian vaccines COVAXIN and COVISHIELD at 2-8 degrees Celsius.
However, incidents of vaccines for frozen have also been reports from a few places. Almost 100 vials of COVISHIELD, containing 100 doses, were found frozen at the sub-zero temperature at the Silchar Medical College and Hospital (SMCH) in Assam's Cachar district.
Dr Jayalal believes that the reported scarcity of vaccines in India could be handled if "we can stop the wastage."
Several states including Maharashtra, Punjab, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and even Delhi have reported scarcity of vaccines. Although, the claim was rejected by the Union Health Ministry.
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The IMA president is also of the opinion that India should give emergency use authorization to other foreign vaccines which are in use in different countries.
"We are in a very thick situation of the pandemic surge. The only tool in our hands to protect the people to overcome the disease is vaccination. So, the priority should be made more in vaccines," he said.
Dr Jayalal said that the country has not been able to meet the demands of vaccines because of the presence of only two vaccines.
The maximum capacity for the two vaccine manufacturer in India "Bharat Biotech" and Serum Institute of India" to produce vaccines is 8-9 crore in a month against the demand of 30-35 crore, said Dr Jayalal.
"Is it possible for the Indian manufacturers to produce more vaccines?," Jayalal said.
Many other vaccines being manufactured in foreign countries like SputnikV, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and others have applied to the Indian drug regulator for emergency use authorization (EUA) in India.
"The available option for us now is to bring the newly available vaccines which have already been tested in other countries," said Dr Jayalal.
Significantly, India's drug regulator, Drug Controller General of India (DCGI), has been examining the proposal for giving EUA to SputnikV and Johnson & Johnson.
Dr Jayalal said that it is very much necessary to make availability of the vaccines in India looking into the severity of the current Covid19 wave.
"The second wave is very much different from the first wave. Now it's mostly younger age people and youths who are being infected. In earlier waves mostly senior citizens and aged people were getting infected," said Dr Jayalal.
He said that the first wave of the pandemic last year had infected almost 7.2 lakh youths and children (asymptomatic) and this time 20 per cent of children and youths have already been found with symptomatic cases.
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