A study jointly conducted by Pandit Deendayal Energy University and Nirma University suggests that India could see as many as 600,000 new Covid-19 cases daily if the pace of vaccination is not ramped up. Currently, the vaccination rate in August has increased because of the higher production of vaccines by the two leading suppliers – the Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech but this level of vaccine production may not sustain more than 5 million or at most 5.5 million jabs in arms, daily.
Nevertheless, in August 2021, 8 million and even 8.8 million doses have been administered on some days. Without the reassurance of the vaccine supply to maintain this level (240 million doses monthly), the jabs in arms will likely go down. The likely production of the four other approved vaccines is yet to ramp up and cannot be forecast to reach any sizable number before October.
The only way to maintain the high rate of vaccination achieved on certain days in this month would be to purchase and import vaccines on an urgent basis which the government seems reluctant to do, but we are hopefully wrong about this. The Indian population does not seem to have any significant repugnance or aversion to vaccination.
However, the study cited above apparently calls for more than 10 million jabs a day to avoid the rate of 600,000 new infections daily. It says the daily infections could come down to 200,000 if a 10 million jabs a day program is instituted and successfully administered. A new wave of the virus is being predicted by some experts, while the mainstream press citing this kind of view is also saying there is a lack of scientific evidence one way or other.
The current level of new cases of Covid-19 in India was 11,385 and 267 deaths on 23 August 2021, according to Worldometer.com. This puts India at number 11 on the list of new daily cases and number 7 on the list of daily deaths, while Indonesia is at number 14 in the number of new daily cases and number one with 842 deaths in a day. The United States is at number one in the daily number of new cases – with 111,134 cases and 406 deaths a day on 23 August 2021.
