Coronavirus: India to fast track vaccine approvals; Indonesia satisfied with Sinovac

It is currently using the AstraZeneca shot and a home-grown vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech for its own immunisation drive, and this week approved Russia’s Sputnik V shot for emergency use.

Since April 2, India has reported the world’s highest daily tallies of infections, topping 100,000 last week. It reported 161,736 cases on Tuesday, taking the total to 13.7 million. Deaths rose by 879 to 171,058.

India is currently reporting around double the daily cases of the United States and Brazil, the two other worst affected countries, though its daily death toll is lower. India’s total infections rank after only the United States, having overtaken Brazil on Monday.

The jump in infections, for which Health Minister Harsh Vardhan acknowledged widespread failure by citizens to heed curbs on movement and social interaction as contributory factors, has prompted calls for the government to cancel huge public events. But hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus are set to bathe in the Ganges river on Wednesday, the third key day of a weeks-long festival.

Nearly a million bathed in the Ganges on Monday in the belief that its waters would wash away their sins. More than 100 tested positive for Covid-19, in random testing of around 18,000 attendees testing carried out by authorities, local media said.

“It means … the ability to form antibodies in our bodies is still very good,” she said.

Researchers who conducted Sinovac’s clinical trials in Brazil released new data on Monday that confirmed the company’s previously announced efficacy rate of about 50 per cent. The paper, which was published on a website for scientists and has not yet been peer reviewed, showed that the vaccine was 50.7 per cent effective against symptomatic Covid-19 cases and much stronger against severe ones.

China has distributed hundreds of millions of doses of domestically made vaccines abroad and is relying on them for its own mass immunisation campaign.

Tarmizi said Indonesia would wait to see the results of any clinical trials before considering mixing vaccines. “We are going to wait, waiting for the clinical trial to ensure the idea or innovation will have better effectiveness, immunogenicity and efficacy level compared to the current condition,” she said.

Experts say mixing vaccines, or sequential immunisation, might boost effectiveness. Researchers in Britain are studying a possible combination of the Pfizer and the AstraZeneca vaccines.

Just over 1 million people in the Philippines have received their first shot since the beginning of March – a fraction of the number needed to reach herd immunity in the country of 110 million. The slow roll-out and limited supply have fuelled criticism of the government’s handling of the pandemic as a record surge in infections threatens to overwhelm hospitals in the locked-down capital and surrounding provinces.

The vaccination campaign initially targeted health care workers and soldiers, but it has since widened to include the elderly and those with co-morbidities. While many world leaders received their jab in public to encourage others to get inoculated, Duterte said he would forgo the opportunity.

“I will waive. Whoever wants to get my slot, I will give (it to them),” he said in a pre-recorded speech released on Monday.

“Let’s prioritise those who, once they get a vaccine, there’s a chance that he would live and live productively,” said the 76-year-old, after a two-week absence from the public eye that fuelled speculation he had Covid-19. “Most of the senior citizens are no longer that productive.”

In the past, Duterte has suggested he would be willing to be inoculated in public – after saying he would get it in private.

Alvi also said on Twitter he has recovered from his own case of Covid-19, but was still feeling weakness.

He urged people to continue adhering to social distancing rules after authorities said most people were still not wearing face masks at public place. Alvi’s appeal on Tuesday came hours after Pakistan reported 118 deaths from the virus in the past 24 hours, the highest in recent months.

Pakistan has largely relied on donated or imported Chinese vaccines, which are only being offered to health workers and older people. One pharmaceutical company has imported 50,000 doses of the Russian vaccine, which is available in big cities.

Pakistan hopes it will receive 15 million Covid-19 vaccine doses through the UN-backed Covax Facility programme by next month, when authorities plan to register all citizens for vaccination.

The government had been in talks with the New Jersey-based pharmaceutical giant, which had asked the Australian regulator, Therapeutic Goods Administration, for provisional registration.

But Health Minister Greg Hunt ruled out a J&J contract because its vaccine was similar to the AstraZeneca product, which Australia had already contracted for 53.8 million doses. He said the government was following the advice of Australia’s scientific and technical advisory group.

“J&J is another viral vector vaccine and we have no advice recommending, at this point, that the government purchase any additional viral vector vaccine,” Hunt told reporters. “That’s not a reflection, that’s simply an observation.”

Australia has been relatively successful in containing the spread of the virus, but criticism is mounting over the pace of its vaccination roll-out. It had planned to rely on Australian-manufactured AstraZeneca to reach a target of delivering at least one dose of vaccine to all eligible adults among a population of 26 million by October.

But the government abandoned that target after it advised last week that Pfizer was now the preferred option for people under 50 years because of a potential risk of rare blood clots linked to AstraZeneca.

Reporting by Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse