{"id":71393,"date":"2020-11-30T10:57:35","date_gmt":"2020-11-30T05:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=71393"},"modified":"2021-05-08T17:40:47","modified_gmt":"2021-05-08T12:10:47","slug":"vaccination-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/vaccination-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Vaccination policy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Context:\u00a0<\/strong>India\u2019s COVID-19 control plan of actions can be the basis for building a much-needed public health infrastructure.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>How can vaccine help in eradicating a disease?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Preventive medicines:\u00a0<\/strong>Vaccines play a major role in human mastery over infectious diseases by inducing immunity in individuals.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Herd immunity<\/strong>: When a vaccine is rolled out as a national programme and increasing proportions of people are vaccinated, \u2018herd immunity\u2019 level increases and disease frequency decreases in the vaccinated population.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The \u2018herd effect\u2019 of vaccination<\/strong>: That decelerates transmission of the microbe in the whole community, resulting in decreasing disease frequency even in the unvaccinated segment of population.\n<ul>\n<li>Herd immunity plus herd effect reduces the overall disease burden in the community.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Control:\u00a0<\/strong>In epidemiology, the common word \u2018control\u2019 has a specific meaning: \u2018deliberate reduction of disease frequency to a desired level, validated with evidence\u2019.\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li>For evidence, disease frequencies must be documented both at baseline and on an ongoing basis, through systematic surveillance. So, control interventions include vaccination programme and disease surveillance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Elimination:<\/strong>\u00a0The extreme form of control is \u2018elimination\u2019 of transmission of the microbe in a whole country.\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li>For example, measles and rubella have been eliminated in Sri Lanka through sustained vaccination achieving high coverage.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Diseases eradicated using vaccine<\/strong>: Eradication is global elimination of an infectious disease. So far, smallpox and cattle plague have been eradicated using their respective vaccines.\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li>Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was eradicated in 2003 without a vaccine, using \u2018non-pharmacological interventions\u2019, or NPI, systematic case detection, contact tracing and quarantine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>What are the statuses of vaccine candidates in India?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Protective efficacies:<\/strong>\u00a0Three COVID-19 vaccines have claims of about 90-95% protective efficacy are BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech), mRNA-1273 (Moderna) and Sputnik-V (Gamaleya Institute).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Trial phases<\/strong>: Sputnik-V is under phase 2-phase 3 vaccine trials in India, by Dr. Reddy\u2019s Laboratories. Another vaccine, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (OxfordAstraZeneca), manufactured under licence by Serum Institute of India as Covishield, is undergoing phase 2-phase 3 trials in India.<\/li>\n<li>An indigenous vaccine candidate, Covaxin (Bharat Biotech), found safe and immunogenic in phase 1 and phase 2 trials, is now under phase 3 trial.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Policy development:\u00a0<\/strong>In India\u2019s national Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP), vaccines are procured and supplied by the Union government and vaccination is implemented by State governments.\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li>States have the freedom to surpass policy limits if no fund is sought.<\/li>\n<li>For example, Delhi used the Measles Mumps-Rubella vaccine when the central government policy was only for Measles vaccine and Sikkim unilaterally used human papillomavirus vaccine to prevent cervical cancer in women.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>What can be done to tackle the issues?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Policy issue:<\/strong>\u00a0An important policy issue is whether vaccination should be confined to only uninfected individuals or should it be for all people. All test results of infected subjects are available on a computer data base and that is one way to identify those who were already infected.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Trained staff:<\/strong>\u00a0The vaccination stations should be staffed with trained personnel and supervised by medical doctors.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Infrastructure:<\/strong>\u00a0The site must have a waiting area and a post-vaccination staying area to manage any untoward reaction during the first hour.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Digital list:<\/strong>\u00a0A computerised master list with details and mobile numbers of all vaccinated subjects needs to be maintained for the purpose of post-vaccination follow up to document rare side-effects.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Data management:<\/strong>\u00a0Data management has to be meticulously planned and executed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Way forward<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>This is a huge opportunity to eliminate the novel coronavirus from India, setting an example to the rest of the world. With will and wisdom we can, and should, accomplish this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context:\u00a0India\u2019s COVID-19 control plan of actions can be the basis for building a much-needed public health infrastructure. How can vaccine help in eradicating a disease? Preventive medicines:\u00a0Vaccines play a major role in human mastery over infectious diseases by inducing immunity in individuals. Herd immunity: When a vaccine is rolled out as a national programme and&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/vaccination-policy\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Vaccination policy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":71691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,1351,1310,9],"tags":[1315,1289,1456,1472],"class_list":["post-71393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-daily-news","category-daily-news-updates","category-public","tag-st_1","tag-soc_0","tag-soc_01","tag-vaccine_related_issues","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Vaccination-policy-1.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1701858619},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}