Coronavirus in India

A large section of Indian population has already had Covid, owing to which they have a certain amount of natural immunity from recent infections.

A year into the pandemic, scientists managed to develop vaccines that could mitigate the impact of the coronavirus. That, along with Covid-appropriate ...

The high vaccination penetration in urban as well as rural areas also provides a greater degree of protection against the new threat. A key factor in the success of India's vaccination drive was the digital platform Co-WIN (Covid-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network). At the outset, not only did India have a low stock of doses, but it also had to contend with supply chain disruptions and vaccine hesitancy. And the result was, nearly a year after India reported its first Covid case, the country launched the vaccination drive in January 2021. Despite the controversies surrounding Covaxin, perhaps its biggest endorsement was that PM Modi took two jabs of the home-grown vaccine. A year into the pandemic, scientists managed to develop vaccines that could mitigate the impact of the coronavirus. But India managed to set a benchmark by successfully inoculating over 88 per cent of its adult population (as of November 2022). At the time, the world did not have tools to efficiently nip the infection in bud and it went on to wreak havoc across the globe. India began the process to develop vaccines in April 2020, in the early stages of the pandemic. And here’s what India did right in bringing Covid-19 under control: It was three years back when coronavirus first broke out in Wuhan, before spreading to other Chinese cities and then spilling over to the rest of the world. And India made sure that it adopted all these practices to come out, if not unscathed, a little less damaged out of the pandemic.

Dr Chandrakant Lahariya, one of India's leading public health policy experts, in light of the COVID-19 surge in China, and the myriad of questions about how ...

It is the responsibility of the government to assess policy measures. There is no need for people in India to worry. This means that Indians are already exposed to it, and it has not caused any spike in the number of cases. There is no surprise with what is happening in China. However, the situation is worrisome in China – we don't know and cannot say for sure what is happening with hospitalisations or deaths. Only vulnerable population need to wear masks," stresses Dr Chandrakant Lahariya, one of India's leading public health policy experts, in light of the [COVID-19 surge in China](https://www.thequint.com/coronavirus/faq/china-covid-surge-bf7-omicron-variant), and the myriad of questions about how it can impact India.