India's seniors to get their jabs from this week

As India prepares to vaccinate its elderly population against the coronavirus from today, public health officials are gearing up to tackle the immense logistics and pockets of vaccine hesitancy.

Minister of Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar announced on Thursday that from the coming week, Indians over 60 years of age, as well as those over 45 with health problems that raise the risk of severe Covid-19, could get their jabs at 20,000 private hospitals or 10,000 government-run vaccination centres.

The government centres will give free jabs. Private hospitals can charge 250 rupees (S$4.50) per dose, the government has said.

The expansion of vaccination is timely as the country might be poised for a new surge of Covid-19.

Late February's daily figure of more than 16,000 new cases is nowhere near last September's high of around 100,000 new cases a day. But as malls and schools reopen, buses and trains ply their routes, and Indians abandon masks and social distancing, states such as Kerala and Maharashtra are seeing infections spike. Nearly 200 Indians have also caught the more transmissible UK, South African and Brazilian coronavirus strains.

"The virus has an ability to stage a comeback… so it's very important to vaccinate more people," said Dr Samiran Panda, a member of the national expert group on Covid-19 vaccines.

India started its vaccination drive on Jan 16, prioritising healthcare workers. It has a target of vaccinating 300 million by August, but so far, only 13.7 million doses have been given. Experts attribute the slow pace of about 390,000 jabs a day to organisational snags and worries over vaccine safety.

India has been administering two approved vaccines: Covishield, the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India; and in smaller numbers, the indigenous Covaxin developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech.

Influential medical professionals have expressed concern over how Covaxin had been approved, and the government's opaqueness regarding side effects of Covishield. Rumours and fake information on social media also significantly hit the vaccine take-up rate.

"There has been a lot of discussion, although not all scientifically sound, about vaccine safety. I underline that both vaccines are safe... No safety corner was cut before giving accelerated approvals," said Dr Panda, who is head epidemiologist at the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Thanks to the government's assurances and concerns about resurgent infections, vaccination is gathering speed. Hospitals and medical colleges have been registering their staff on a centralised government software application called CoWIN, which schedules each individual's time and location for vaccination. The CoWIN app will now be open to 270 million senior citizens.

Mr R.K. Sharma, chairman of the government panel for Covid-19 vaccination, told The Quint website he was aware of initial glitches with the app, and attributed them to "issues with data" and not the technology. "Our digital system is prepared for (10 million) Covid vaccinations per day without any problem," he said.

People will have the option of registering on site too, or booking appointments through 300,000 community service centres the government will set up.