Herculean task

With the spurt in news about the positive progress of the vaccine in various countries, we are entering a new phase in the COVID-19 saga. The world is beginning to concretise medical tools to fight the disease. Hitherto, the responses had been of a physical nature, like masking and social distancing.

Even if a bunch of vaccines are finalised by the last quarter of 2020, inoculating the entire global population will be a herculean task. It could take two to three years, maybe till 2022. Thus, the economic turbulence of 2020, could spill into 2021 and a part of 2022 also.

The most important challenge will be to build pipelines or channels of distribution from the five or six vaccine producing pharma companies, all based principally in the US and Europe, to every town and  village in the world.

There are about 170 vaccines under review in various laboratories across the world. Even if five or six are finally cleared, ideally the production should be farmed out to high-population countries like China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Nigeria, to ensure seamless logistics of distribution.

About seven billion people across countries, have to be inoculated across the world. So the vaccines have to be packed appropriately, transported and delivered to the consumption centres, town and villages

We will have to establish optimum delivery mechanisms to distribute the vaccine, even in villages with a population of less than 500, in countries like India, Kenya, Yemen. Arranging for adequate number of trained health workers to administer the vaccine is also a major task in many developing countries.

We also need to decide the percentage of people that need to be vaccinated in each country. For instance, India and China have populations exceeding one billion. A review will be necessary to decide whether the entire population needs to be inoculated, or we factor in the herd immunity feature. Moreover, we need clarity about the age level of the children to be inoculated. We need to decide whether babies below the age of around two years, need to be inoculated.

Many of these issues are arduous challenges and will take time to understand and resolve. However, the scientific and medical fraternity need to start thinking about them. We are in unchartered waters.

Rajendra Aneja — Mumbai, India