COVID-19 kills more than 4,000 Indians amid clamour for vaccines

NEW DELHI: India recorded more than 4,000 COVID-19 deaths for a second straight day on Thursday as infections stayed below 400,000, and extended the interval between doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to up to 16 weeks amid a dire shortage of shots in the country.

Experts remain unsure when numbers will peak and concern is growing about the transmissibility of the variant that is driving infections in India and spreading worldwide.

Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, said most models had predicted a peak this week and that the country could be seeing signs of that trend.
Still, the number of new cases each day is large enough to overwhelm hospitals, she said on Twitter. “The key word is cautious optimism.”

The situation is particularly bad in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with a population of over 240 million. Television pictures have shown families weeping over the dead in rural hospitals or camping in wards to tend the sick.

 CLAMOUR FOR VACCINES

The second wave of infections, which erupted in February, has been accompanied by a slowdown in vaccinations, although Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that vaccinations would be open to all adults from May 1.

Although it is the world’s largest vaccine producer, India has run low on stocks in the face of the huge demand. As of Thursday, it had fully vaccinated just over 38.2 million people, or about 2.8% of a population of about 1.35 billion, government data shows.

The health ministry on Thursday accepted a recommendation by a government panel to extend the gap between the first and second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine made at the Serum Institute of India to 12-16 weeks, from 6-8 weeks currently.

The recommendation, aided in part by evidence from the UK, comes as India faces extreme shortage of vaccines.

There were no changes in the interval for the domestically developed Covaxin, the other shot being used in the country.

The government of most populous Uttar Pradesh said it will spend up to $1.36 billion to buy COVID-19 shots and held early talks this week with companies such as Pfizer (PFE.N) and the local distributor of Russia’s Sputnik.

More than 2 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines will likely be available in India between August to December this year, top government advisor V.K.Paul told reporters amid criticism that the government had mishandled the vaccine plan.

Those doses would include 750 million of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, as well as 550 million doses of Covaxin, made by Bharat Biotech.