Last week, more than 20 European countries paused the vaccine’s roll-out for few days after cases of blood clots were detected in the people who had been vaccinated.
By Sanjenbam Jugeshwor Singh
India is now identifying more than one million coronavirus cases every three days with many times more thought to be going unregistered in a vast country where public health surveillance is often poor. Daily deaths exceeds 2,800 on 15th May but these too are thought to be many times higher. Epidemiologists and other experts are speculating that several factors have coalesced over the past months to bring India to the point of the world’s worst Covid-19 outbreak. One idea is that India’s second wave is being driven by highly infectious variants of the virus that causes Covid-19. The so called “double mutations” or B1.6.7 variant has received significant attentions, though virologists note that it does not appear to be the dominant strain across the country and nowhere near have enough samples of the virus been taken to firmly place the blame on any one variant. The U.K variant is driving infectious in parts of India, as well as other mutations that are yet to be studied properly. The best guess of epidemiologists is that these are more infectious than the iterations of the virus that were spreading in the country last year. We can say (these variants) are all more infectious based on their behavior. Though, in India we have not been able to correlate the mutant variants with the surge based on what we’ve seen earlier (in the U.k and elsewhere), it’s the legal explanation.
Variants of interest or concern have been circulating in India since at least last December, when cases there were still declining, so they are unlikely to be the only factor driving this renewed outbreak. India had largely relaxed its social distancing one, quarantine measures by March-a decision now viewed as a profound political misjudgment. Official case number in India started to decline steeply from September. It could have been an opportunity to grid the country’s healthcare system and build vaccination infrastructure ahead of a large second wave of the kind that other countries had witnessed and which many scientists were warning was inevitable. Instead, the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, pressed ahead with election rallies, where he boasted about the size of the crowd and Cricket matches including in a new stadium that bore his name. His Bharatiya Janata party declared India had beaten Covid-19 in a laudatory February resolution. Events permitted to go ahead included the Kumbh Mela, one of the largest gatherings in the world, which drew millions of pilgrims to the bank of the river Ganges over several weeks and probably provided no shortage of potentials hosts for whatever variants were circulating. For many Indians living in crowded slums or forced to work to survive, social distancing is impossible. Yet others, especially middle-class people in larger cities were able to take Covid-19 precaution last year that helped to slow the spread of the virus. Taking the cue from their leaders. Many Indians abandoned these measures through February and March, returning to restaurants, salons and malls. For some, this has been a fatal decision. India has many excellent hospitals and medical professionals, but its state healthcare system is one of the most poorly funded in the world, hovering at a little over 1% of GDP. There is less than one doctor for every 1,000 people and that figures drops further in rural areas and poor states. The result is a fragile system built on fewer beds than required and supplies of medical equipment’s, drugs and oxygen that cannot withstand a surge of cases. It also means less ability to track the scale of the pandemic. In rural areas, especially most people are thought to die at home, their cause of death unregistered.
India entered the pandemic as the world’s largest producer of vaccine. It continues to produce more than 80 million doses a month, but now being stripped by China and U.S, who made significant investment in their manufacturing last year. India I contrast is running into shortages even tough vaccine take-up among Indians has been slower than expected with about nine in 100 people receiving at least one dose so far. But owing to its sheer size, vaccinating its way out of pandemic imminently out of India’s reach. As of last Saturday, there were about 1 billion doses administered worldwide. If every single one of those had been used in India, and assuming a two dose regimen (Johnson & Johnson’s formulation is the only one-dose vaccine so far), the total sum would have been enough to inoculate about 500 million Indian- leaving about 400 million adults still awaiting a shot. Many months later than would have been wise, the union Cabinet has taken steps to increase the supply of vaccine. Last week, it announced a new set of regulation governs the third phase of vaccine roll-out. These included the opening up of the private market in vaccine, allowing all those above 18 years access to vaccines through channels other than the existing one supervised by the union government. That channel will have the right to half the vaccines produced and it will pay the concessions rates that had earlier been agreed upon between the government and the two vaccine producers, Bharat Biotech and the Serum Institute of India. While vaccines will continue to be available to the union government at Rs 150/ shot, state government will pay Rs400/- shot for the vaccine by SII and private market it will pay Rs 600/ shot. For Bharat biotech, COVAXINE, it will cost Rs 600/ for state government and Rs 1,200/-for private hospitals.
In January, French president Emmanuel Macron called the AstraZeneca –oxford coronavirus vaccine “quasi-ineffective “for people over 65, on the day that the European medicines agency(EMA) recommended approving it. Although some 20 million doses of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca, based in Cambridge, U.K. have been administered across Europe, a political war of words has erupted over its safety and efficacy. Such interventions risk increasing vaccine hesitancy. Communication and vaccine safety and efficacy must always be handled with extreme care. Last week, more than 20 European countries paused the vaccine’s roll-out for few days after cases of blood clots were detected in the people who had been vaccinated. There were 7 cases of clots in multiple blood vessels (disseminated intravascular coagulation) and 18 cases of clotting, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. Among the people affected 9 deaths had been recorded. In Manipur too, 5 persons who received two jabs of vaccine reported positive and 9 persons after single jab. Vaccine hesitancy is mounting concern around the world and Europe is now experiencing its third wave of pandemic. It’s becoming clear from research that mistrust in government is a factor for those reluctant to be vaccinated. Mistrust in governments comes in many forms. In France, vaccine hesitancy is associated with public controversies involving the government and pharmaceutical industry. Research say that a loss of trust coincided with government overestimated the need for vaccine against H1N1 swine influenza in 2009.
a A team of over 1,000 lawyers and over 10,000 medical experts led by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich , have begun legal proceedings against CDC, WHO and the DAVOS Group for crime against humanity. Dr. Fullmich and his team present the faulty PCR test and the other for doctors to table any comorbidity death as a Covid death as fraud. The PCR test was never designed to detect pathogens and is 100% faulty at 35 cycles. All the PCR tests overseen by the CDC are set at 37 to 45 cycles. The CDC admits that any tests over 28 cycles are not admissible over 90% of the alleged covid case/ infections, tracked by the use of their faulty tests and fraudulent death certificate, the experimental vaccine itself is in violation of Article 32 of the Geneva Convention. Under Article 32 of 1949 Geneva Convention IV, mutation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment of a protected person are prohibited. According to Article 147, conducting biological experiments on protected persons is a grave breach of the convention. The experimental vaccine is in violation of all 10 of the Nuremberg Codes which carry the death penalty for those who seek to violate these International Law. The vaccine fails to meet the essential requirement to be considered a vaccine and is by definition a medical experiment and trial. Crime against humanity affects us all. They are a crime against you, your children, your parents, your grandparents, your community and your country and your future.
(Sanjenbam Jugeshwor Singh is Asst Prof JCRE Global College, Babupara, Imphal. He can be reached at [email protected])