Lancet sets out 'flexible' Covid-19 vaccination strategy for India, says outreach is key
Elaborating on the matter, the Lancet report said that "community-based outreach activities" as well as transport facilities for the older section of the population can help reduce the distance between a vaccination centre and its potential beneficiaries in different regions.
A Lancet report published on Friday shed more light on potential steps that India can take to tackle the raging coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak in the country, pointing out that a 'flexible' and 'agile' vaccination strategy is the need of the hour. The report also highlighted the importance of sentinel site-based surveillance and detection of early warning signals with the help of the test positivity ratio (TPR).
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The Lancet report, titled 'Responsive and Agile Vaccination Strategies Against COVID-19 in India' was published in the current issue of its monthly, open-access global health magazine. It explained how even "limited vaccination resources" can be deployed to the best extent when used 'flexibly'. For this purpose, it cited experience past influenza pandemics in 1918 and 2009, as well the current coronavirus pandemic in several other countries, to observe that there might be more than two waves of the infection.
“Flexible, agile vaccination strategies could thus play an important part in protecting lives and livelihoods as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold,” the report read.
Elaborating on the matter, the Lancet report said that "community-based outreach activities" as well as transport facilities for the older section of the population can help reduce the distance between a vaccination center and its potential beneficiaries in different regions. These outreach activities include -- setting up satellite vaccination centers closer to hamlets in rural settings; resident welfare associations in urban areas arranging vaccination for people in the vicinity; drive-in vaccination using large community halls and parking spaces, etc.
The active engagement of community-based organisations for this purpose is key to achieving a flexible Covid-19 vaccination strategy, the report said. “Such measures will help to speed up vaccination while maintaining safety,” it said.
Further, the report also noted a few key facts about the protection that even a single dose of the Covid-19 vaccine can provide.
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Early findings from the UK suggest that the single-dose efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine is significantly reduced when considering symptomatic infection of B.1.617.2, the dominant Covid-19 variant in India, as an endpoint. However, the entire scenario offers up a "mixed picture". More recent findings suggest that a single dose of the vaccine can protect against hospitalisation, as has been reported among as many as 71% of the health workers in India, it said.
Similarly, a rapid-response vaccination strategy could potentially reduce mortality substantially, even though single-dose vaccine efficacy was reduced to 30%. “It will be important to adjust for population density and other factors to make systematic comparisons of seroprevalence across different regions, but the collection of the necessary evidence will take time. In the immediate term, more rapidly deployable strategies are urgently needed,” it added.
