• Thursday, March 28, 2024

Coronavirus

India becomes third country to pass 400,000 Covid-19 deaths

A policeman and volunteers give snacks to children after giving swab samples to test for the Covid-19 coronavirus inside a van launched by Delhi Police in association with Star Imaging and Path lab, in New Delhi on July 1, 2021. (Photo by PRAKASH SINGH/AFP via Getty Images)

By: Pramod Kumar

INDIA became the third country to pass 400,000 Covid-19 deaths, official data showed Friday (2), as the country’s vast vaccination drive slows.

Total deaths are 400,312, according to the health ministry — behind only the US and Brazil — with total cases almost 30.5 million.

Many experts suspect India’s true death toll is more than a million, after a devastating spike in cases in April and May that overwhelmed hospitals.

“Undercounting of deaths is something that has happened across states, mostly because of lags in the system, so that means we will never have a true idea of how many people we lost in this second wave,” said Rijo M John, a professor at the Rajagiri College of Social Sciences in the southern city of Kochi.

The surge was blamed on the Delta variant and government complacency after Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory over the virus in January.

Daily case numbers have since decreased significantly and many restrictions on activity have been lifted, raising fears of a new spike in coming months.

The government aims to vaccinate all of the country’s 1.1 billion adults this year. But because of shortages, administrative confusion and hesitancy, only around five per cent have had two doses so far.

On June 21, the government tried to jumpstart the drive by making vaccines free for all adults, leading to a surge in demand with more than nine million shots being given in a day.

Daily inoculation rates have since slowed again, however, averaging just over four million per day over the past week, according to government figures.

A government affidavit filed with the Supreme Court this week slashed the number of doses the government expects to be available between August and December to 1.35 billion, from a previous projection of 2.16 billion, according to media reports.

The filing mentioned five kinds of vaccine, down from eight in its forecast in May, the reports said, and cut the number of predicted AstraZeneca doses to 500 million from 750 million previously.

India has been using AstraZeneca’s vaccine, made locally by partner Serum Institute of India, and a homegrown shot named Covaxin from Bharat Biotech.

Last month, Serum said it planned to increase monthly production to nearly 100 million doses from July. Bharat Biotech now estimates it will make 23 million doses a month.

On Tuesday (29), India approved the Moderna vaccine for domestic use, taking to four the number available along with AstraZeneca, Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin and Russia’s Sputnik V.

Indian drugmaker Zydus Cadila on Thursday (1) said it had applied for approval for its plasmid DNA-based vaccine after trials showed an efficacy rate of 67 percent.

Large crowds at vaccination centres

In two of the country’s biggest states governed by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, police were ordered in to control large crowds outside some vaccination centres, as panic spread over shortages of doses.

In India‘s financial capital of Mumbai, vaccination centres were only open for three hours on Friday and the number of doses available was limited, the city’s civic body said.

“I have been standing in line every day for the last 10 days, but every time I return without getting my dose because they don’t have enough of them,” said Sayali Kamble, a domestic helper in Mumbai.

In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, several vaccination centres shut down in Ahmedabad, the main industrial city.

In Madhya Pradesh, governed by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, the pace of vaccinations fell over 40 per cent. In one district, police were called in to control a stampede after crowds broke through a shuttered gate at a local vaccination camp, NDTV news channel reported.

India has recorded 30.45 million cases of Covid-19 since the outbreak of the pandemic last year, and is the second-most affected country behind the US, which has 33 million cases.

The US has reported over 604,000 deaths, while about 518,000 people have died in Brazil.

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