Lancet Defines ‘Flexible’ Covid-19 Vaccination Strategy For India, Says Awareness Is Key | Latest India News

A Lancet report released on Friday shed light on potential measures India can take to tackle the outbreak of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) raging in the country, stressing that a vaccination strategy ” flexible ”and“ agile ”is the need of the hour. The report also highlighted the importance of sentinel site-based surveillance and detection of early warning signals using the test positivity report (TPR).

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The Lancet report, titled “Reactive and Agile Vaccination Strategies Against COVID-19 in India” was published in the current issue of its monthly open access global health magazine. He explained how even “limited immunization resources” can be best deployed when used “flexibly”. To that end, he cited the experience of past influenza pandemics in 1918 and 2009, as well as the current coronavirus pandemic in several other countries, to observe that there could be more than two waves of infection.

“Flexible and agile vaccination strategies could thus play an important role in protecting lives and livelihoods as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold,” the report said.

Elaborating on the issue, the Lancet report said that “community-based outreach” as well as transport facilities for the older segment of the population can help reduce the distance between an immunization center and its potential beneficiaries. in different regions. These sensitization activities include: setting up satellite vaccination centers closer to rural hamlets; associations to help residents of urban areas organize the vaccination of local residents; driving vaccination using large community halls and parking lots, etc.

The active engagement of community organizations to this end is essential to achieve a flexible Covid-19 vaccination strategy, according to the report. “Such measures will help speed up vaccination while maintaining safety,” he said.

Additionally, the report also noted some key facts about the protection that even a single dose of the Covid-19 vaccine can provide.

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Early findings from the UK suggest that the single-dose efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine is significantly reduced when considering symptomatic infection of B.1.617.2, the dominant variant of Covid-19 in India, as an evaluation criterion. However, the whole scenario offers a “mixed picture”. More recent findings suggest that a single dose of the vaccine may protect against hospitalization, as has been reported in up to 71% of health workers in India, he said.

Likewise, a rapid response vaccination strategy could potentially significantly reduce mortality, even if the efficacy of the single-dose vaccine was reduced to 30%. “It will be important to adjust population density and other factors to make systematic comparisons of seroprevalence in different regions, but collecting the necessary evidence will take time. In the immediate term, more rapidly deployable strategies are urgently needed, ”he added.