(Dr Raghava Gundavarapu)
Now Israel has become the first country in the world to say goodbye to Masks, Social Distancing and Handwashing. The country has lifted the mask mandate and allowed in-person classes in school.
This is a great achievement for a country with a population a little lesser than 1 crore. To attain this there should be a lot of commitment, hard work, planning, etc. Once a community attains herd immunity then the spread of the virus reduces drastically, everyone can do their job and return to normal economic activity.
How long will it take for India to achieve this is a big question? India with a huge population getting there will be a mammoth task, and it needs to be quick and accurate planning and a quite lot of human and economic resources.
India with a 135 crore population, needs to inoculate 70 percent of its population, to attain herd immunity, that is at least 100 crores people. Two doses per person, India requires 200 crore doses are required to do that. The present capacity of both Serum Institute and Bharat biotech is 6 crore doses per month. At this rate, it will take 36 months to get to that target.
At the current pace of vaccination, the country would need another 8 years 9 months to inoculate 70 percent of the population, a threshold required to achieve herd immunity.
According to a media report on April 21, in the past 50 days, India could give the first shot of the vaccine only to 9.78 crore people while the second dose was administered to 1.5 crore people only.
With more vaccines are to be introduced in the next few months, Bharath Biotech and Serum Institute are going to ramp up the vaccine production.
The expected doses of various vaccines of different companies that can be produced in the coming months are May 7.5 crore, June 10.5 crore, August, September, and October 19.3 crore doses, and from November onwards 22.5 crore doses per month. These are all estimates and become reality only when everything goes well in areas of approval, manufacturing, and distribution, etc.
By the end of March 2022, the required 200 crore doses of vaccine can be produced and distributed, and inoculated by 70 percent of the population.
Once this is attained then India can open up full-scale commercial activity.
Till then opening the bars, pubs, cinema theatres, gyms, parks, and other public spaces should be prohibited.
Even if we take a six-month delay in implementing the vaccination program, it will be only by September or October 2022, that India can return to normal life.
(Dr. Raghav Gundavarapu, is a practicing surgeon from Ongole, Andhra Pradesh)