Documenting 21st Century - India and the World

Since last few weeks Govt has been saying that their first priority is to fully vaccinate adult population before starting new booster program as Omicron wave has arrived. I misunderstood this as a constraint due to shortage of vaccines (i was wrong), but its something else.  India now has vaccine manufacturing capacity of 300-335 Million vaccine doses per month. That is 250-275 Million doses of Covishield/Astrazeneca and 50-60 Million of Covaxin. The reports say that capacity is 90% utilizable (on SII). Roughly speaking, it means that India has manufacturing capacity of 10-11 Million production per day (read 1 & 2 ). India is also importing some Sputnik V but this is a very small number in overall equation.     Overall Vaccination chart - Doses per day administered (7 day average). Source   Vaccine doses per day administered in December. Source     But the vaccine administration is lagging to vaccine production (or vaccine manufacturing capacity). I...

Apparently, there's a terrible policy paralysis in the Govt about vaccine booster shot policy. Reasons unknown. Its understandable that there is scarcity of vaccines and we haven't fully vaccinated adult population. But this is no reason to delay booster shots policy to healthcare workers, employed in high risk working environment in Hospitals, health centers, clinics, labs etc. India's vaccination program started in January and many of the healthcare workers are past 6 months of their second vaccine shot. Central Govt should immediately issue notification (do it tonight like Demonetization) that healthcare workers, Doctors, Nurses etc and other hospital staff (ward persons, guards etc) employed in high risk healthcare environment will get booster shots starting from tomorrow. Time period of booster shot gap can be consulted with experts (6 months ok?). If central Govt is sleeping, then state Govt should issue their own notification and start booster shots program in their...

Recently, i have been busy on other projects. But i felt going back to writing a little more on Pandemic. Yes, the bad news is that Pandemic is not over and there may be (will be) a new wave of Omicron variant of Covid-19 in India. The figures of detected Omicron cases (few dozen) are meaningless numbers and real numbers are much higher and we already have community transmission of Omicron.  I will get right to some core points. Certain positives Much better vaccination rate compared to the time of Delta wave   The vaccination rates and vaccine production in India in last several months has been good. I know, its not up to the mark in many ways - vaccinations per million, vaccination for children, diverse pool of vaccines still not available (mRNA) etc etc. But we now have fully vaccinated nearly 55% of adult population (would be over 60% by end of December), which frankly i didn't expect us to achieve back in May. Covidshield/Astrazeneca production capacity is around 250-27...