We are nowhere near herd immunity: Dr Soumya Swaminathan

“We can’t afford people dying on vaccine preventable diseases because we were too focused on Covid. We need excellent communication which is 100 per cent transparent," said Dr Soumya Swaminathan, WHO scientist

Hyderabad: Solidarity, global collaboration and unity are going to be crucial for overcoming the pandemic. A pandemic can’t be addressed in a country-by-country basis. We are nowhere near a herd immunity, so for the next of 2021, we need to stick to the health precautions laid down, said Dr Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist, World Health Organization, in a panel discussion ‘Immunising the World’ as part of BioAsia on Monday.

She added, “We can’t afford people dying on vaccine preventable diseases because we were too focused on Covid. We need excellent communication which is 100 per cent transparent. Having a dialogue is necessary – vaccine hesitancy is because of a lack of dialogue.”

Commenting on UNICEF’s vaccine delivery landscape, Dr Robin Nandy, principal advisor and chief of Immunizations, UNICEF, said, “We recognise that what’s important now is an equitable vaccine delivery across the country. Delivery is a necessity now. Our decades-long experience in child immunisation allows 85 per cent coverage globally, so we still miss 20 million children approximately. The pandemic itself caused disruption in routine child immunisation. With the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines, these are the same communities that will miss out the benefits of the vaccine. National vaccine deployment plans are just as critical.”

Dr Jerome H Kim, director-general, International Vaccine Institute, South Korea commented working towards a universal platform, “Because we are a research organisation, we work on a number of different platform possibilities. There is no one platform. We need all those vaccines that different companies make on different platforms.”

Vaccine strategy

Dr Krishna Ella, MD, Bharat Biotech, commenting on the global supply of vaccine said, “We want to help the global community and export vaccines. We are keen to be part of WHO’s COVAX. Every country is trying various models. It is a little unorganised today due to the shortage in vaccines. In the next 5-6 months, we expect it to be streamlined and organised.”

On preparing for new mutations of Covid, Dr Ella said, “Mutations are the only way the virus can survive, so RNA viruses are expected. As a manufacturer, with ICMR’s coordination, we can make a product for the South African strain in about 15 days. That will be the fastest one can plug in a full vaccine strategy. We are gearing up in that direction. Data from ICMR and WHO and public participation can be encouraging too.”

Mahima Datia, MD, Biological E, added, “We shouldn’t be overly concerned, we are working on the South Africa variant. But the virus is going to attach itself to the human cells. Eventually we do not know what kinds of mutants will take over. So it is prudent to work on technology. But it’s fairly quick to deploy into a vaccine now.”

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