New Delhi: In his five-point suggestions to deal with the health crisis in the country, former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to invoke the compulsory licensing provisions in the law to allow more companies to produce Covid vaccines.
“This, I recall, had happened earlier in the case of medicines to deal with the HIV/AIDS disease. As far as Covid-19 is concerned, I have read that Israel has already invoked the compulsory licensing provision and there is an overwhelming case for India to do so as well quickly,” the former PM and Rajya Sabha member wrote.
Dr Singh laid stress on scaling up vaccination to fight the deadly virus. He noted that the government should focus on vaccinating a certain percentage of the population instead of absolute numbers.
“Currently, India has vaccinated only a small fraction of its population. I am certain that with the right policy design, we can do much better and very quickly,” said Dr Singh who is also a noted economist.
Key to our fight against Covid19 must be ramping up vaccination effort. We must resist temptation to look at absolute numbers being vaccinated, focus instead on percentage of population vaccinated: Former PM Dr. Manmohan Singh writes to PM Modi on ramping up vaccination programme pic.twitter.com/ZD5SbQOE0u
— Congress (@INCIndia) April 18, 2021
As per the latest government data, the cumulative number of Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the country stands at 12.26 crore.
Eight states account for 59.5% of the total doses given so far in the country. The four states of Gujarat (1,03,37,448), Maharashtra (1,21,39,453), Rajasthan (1,06,98,771) and UP (1,07,12,739) have so far administered more than 1 crore doses each to their population.
The second wave of pandemic seems fiercer than the first one with daily caseload rising exponentially. Reporting more than 2 lakh daily cases, India’s daily new cases count has gone up to 2,61,500. Ten states including Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan report 78.56% of the new cases.
Maharashtra has reported the highest daily new cases at 67,123. It is followed by Uttar Pradesh with 27,334 cases while Delhi has reported 24,375 new cases in the last 24 hours.
In his letter to Narendra Modi, the former Prime Minister has suggested to provide financial support to private vaccine producers in order to inoculate major part of the population in the shortest possible time. He also suggested that states should have flexibility in deciding the targeted group of population for vaccination.
Dr Singh also pitched for government making the orders placed with various vaccine producers and their delivery schedule public. He requested the government to place further orders in advance so that vaccine producers adhere to the supply schedule.
He also said that since domestic vaccine supply is limited, any vaccine that has been cleared for use by credible authorities such as the European Medical Agency or the USFDA should be allowed to be imported without insisting on domestic bridging trials.
“We are facing an unprecedented emergency and I understand experts are of the view that this relaxation is justified in an emergency. The relaxation could be for a limited period during which the bridging trials could be completed in India,” said the top Congress leader.
All consumers of such vaccines could be duly cautioned that these vaccines are being allowed for use based on the approval granted by the relevant authority abroad, he added.