India is off to a good start in its plans to immunise 250 million people by July (Inside pages, “Million shots in under a week”, January 25). Although we took less than a week to vaccinate a million compared to the United States (10 days) and the United Kingdom (18 days), India still has a ‘mountain to climb’. Challenges lie ahead in the supply and disposal of auto-disabled syringes which will prevent reuse and possible reinfection, tracking the doses, prioritisation in the elderly, and preventing fraud over access to vaccines/fake vaccines.
Dr. Thomas Palocaren,
Vellore, Tamil Nadu
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Vaccine hesitancy was not pre-emptively addressed by the policymakers as it involves the entire population of India. Being a public good, the vaccine must be proven beyond any doubt that it is safe from all angles. Building confidence is the first step to win over the people. The haste in rolling out Covaxin should have been avoided. We should be governed by well-established scientific protocol as we are trying to build scientific temper in India. Let us shun vaccine nationalism.
Dr. K.M. George,
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Muvattupuzha, Kerala