Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

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Suraj
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Suraj »

This week is fairly boring, ticking along at 7.5-8M a day everyday. Should manage 52-54M this week. Not a spectacular one week total by our standards, even if its more than what the US has done in the past two months.

Usually when I look at phases of the vaccine availability graph it can foretell a period of quiet progress rather than flashy days. Right now availability is around 43M for the past few days, down from over 50M just before that.

So new batches of production are due and numbers should tick up closer to 10M a day when that starts showing up. Usually that happens around the end of each month.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Jay »

Suraj wrote:This week is fairly boring, ticking along at 7.5-8M a day everyday. Should manage 52-54M this week.
I'm in awe of these numbers.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Karna »

Suraj wrote:This week is fairly boring, ticking along at 7.5-8M a day everyday. Should manage 52-54M this week. Not a spectacular one week total by our standards, even if its more than what the US has done in the past two months.

Usually when I look at phases of the vaccine availability graph it can foretell a period of quiet progress rather than flashy days. Right now availability is around 43M for the past few days, down from over 50M just before that.

So new batches of production are due and numbers should tick up closer to 10M a day when that starts showing up. Usually, that happens around the end of each month.
That explains why the daily count is lower than last week. Key from next month would be Fully vaccinated vs Partial Daily count.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by jamwal »

In late March this year, since everything had started to seem like normal, I embarked on a solo trip to Himalayas and spent a month in remote Himachali villages. Majority of the locals were covering their faces with masks or some clothing item. If they saw an outsider, they'd do it if they were not doing it earlier. The village panchayats had issued instructions and most locals followed them. Only people without masks were tourists and some Nepali Bihari type labourers who go there to work in summers.
I spent around 2 weeks cut off from internet and phone and when I reached back to "civilisation", people were dying due to oxygen shortages. But things were fine in most of Himachal.

Someone dragged me to weekend vacation near Rishikesh last month and going by what happened in March-April, things don't look good. No one was wearing masks. Locals, hotel staff, tourists and pilgrims were all walking around like everything was back to normal. tens of people in a pool jumping around carefree like it was nothing. No safety measures, no sanitisers in dining area or anything like that. If and when the third wave arrives, people will drop off like flies again and the vidhwa vilaa against gobarment will be even louder this time. People just refuse to learn. :roll:
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Karna »

jamwal wrote:In late March this year, since everything had started to seem like normal, I embarked on a solo trip to Himalayas and spent a month in remote Himachali villages. Majority of the locals were covering their faces with masks or some clothing item. If they saw an outsider, they'd do it if they were not doing it earlier. The village panchayats had issued instructions and most locals followed them. Only people without masks were tourists and some Nepali Bihari type labourers who go there to work in summers.
I spent around 2 weeks cut off from internet and phone and when I reached back to "civilisation", people were dying due to oxygen shortages. But things were fine in most of Himachal.

Someone dragged me to weekend vacation near Rishikesh last month and going by what happened in March-April, things don't look good. No one was wearing masks. Locals, hotel staff, tourists and pilgrims were all walking around like everything was back to normal. tens of people in a pool jumping around carefree like it was nothing. No safety measures, no sanitisers in dining area or anything like that. If and when the third wave arrives, people will drop off like flies again and the vidhwa vilaa against government will be even louder this time. People refuse to learn. : roll:
. I have been observing this in Mumbai as well. Wearing masks post-vaccination is like maintaining good hygiene. Some people do; some are ambivalent due to vaccinations. Also their is a big fatigue factor. Unless you are a doctor or military personal wherein you are drilled to follow procedures to the T, their will be lapses by general population.

Key is high rate of vaccination which we are doing.

Hopefully, as compared to the 2nd Wave, we are at a better herd immunity and moving towards an endemic state. Key will be next month, with states opening up even further and festivals kicking in.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Cain Marko »

Any news on booster shots? With a population density so high these would probably be needed sooner or later.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Suraj »

Cain Marko wrote:Any news on booster shots? With a population density so high these would probably be needed sooner or later.
Boosters are driven by efficacy. @Prasannasimha on twitter just posted this study. In summary, 6 months later HCWs show extremely high antibodies, much more than Pfizer did - which was what drove the need for Pfizer boosters. Moderna has not yet required the same, and this study suggests any Covishield boosters are a long way off.
https://twitter.com/prasannasimha/statu ... 51211?s=21
Image
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by vera_k »

Boosters will have to wait in India simply because the first and second round vaccinations are not substantially done yet. Like in other countries, boosters will become inevitable once the initial vaccination series is substantially completed and it is seen that infections are continuing regardless of vaccination status.

Some more reports -
Covishield unable to halt breakthrough Delta infections: Study
Covid booster shot: Why Israel went for it
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by disha »

From the same article above:
“The primary purpose of protection from severe disease is well met by vaccines -- here Covishield. There was no severe disease or death among this cohort (group) of vaccinated healthcare workers even during one of the worst delta surges,” Agrawal sai...
One of the primary goal of vaccination is satisfied here. That is, prevent severe disease or death. And hence the race to get majority of population jab'ed with at least one dose.

Of course the second dose is now interval dependent. That is, given a 84 days to 112 days (12-16 weeks or 3-4 months), anyone getting a covishield jab in August is not eligible for second round until late December or early January. Just for comparison, I think the gap for Covaxin is 4-6 weeks. Hence the population who got a Covaxin jab in August will be eligible for 2nd jab in October.

So breakthrough infections will come through, but it will not send the health care system spiraling down like the second wave.

Will this pandemic die off completely? No. In fact, India is already preparing for the post-pandemic (or endemic) coronavirus management. It will turn out that new strains will have to be monitored and based on that new vaccines have to be rolled out. Hence the DNA/mRNA vaccines and the nasal sprays will help in the post-pandemic stages.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Cain Marko »

Suraj wrote:
Cain Marko wrote:Any news on booster shots? With a population density so high these would probably be needed sooner or later.
Boosters are driven by efficacy. @Prasannasimha on twitter just posted this study. In summary, 6 months later HCWs show extremely high antibodies, much more than Pfizer did - which was what drove the need for Pfizer boosters. Moderna has not yet required the same, and this study suggests any Covishield boosters are a long way off. ]
Wow. That's good news in some ways and makes sense.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Amber G. »

India will start exporting vaccines including J&J vaccines too.. Earning lot of goodwill.
India tells Quad will allow export of 8 million Indo-Pacific vaccine doses
African, S American nations hail PM Modi's vaccine pitch
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Raja »

I hope that the vaccine export is kept minimal till the end of the year. We need to get through Diwali and beyond without any major new wave. But I guess that with almost 70% of the adults vaccinated with one dose, India is at the cusp of running out of people willing to get vaccinated and there should be some excess supply.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Suraj »

Dussehra is Oct 15, Diwali is Nov 4

Therefore the total vaccinations by end Sept and mid-Oct matter, since this ensures everyone since that date has been vaccinated at least 2 weeks ago with a first or second dose.

Currently we have done:
860 million total
633 million first
227 million second

By start of Oct it should be 900 million - split 648M/252M since we're increasingly seeing days with more second doses than first.

By mid Oct it should be around 1.05 billion, with a rough split of 700M / 350M, or 75% / 38% in terms of percentage of eligible population .

By the cusp of Diwali, vaccinations should be around 1.2 billion doses done, though the latest shots will have been too recent to have an effect on recipients.

In comparison, at the cusp of the second wave, we had done ~65 million vaccinations total, over 20% of those being to HCWs/FLWs .
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Raja »

It is going to be very interesting to see how much slow down we see in 1st doses going forward. Most countries have struggled after 60% coverage and we already past that. Can India make it to 80% without a major slow down? It is going to be hard to get those last millions vaccinated.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Kakkaji »

Raja wrote:It is going to be very interesting to see how much slow down we see in 1st doses going forward. Most countries have struggled after 60% coverage and we already past that. Can India make it to 80% without a major slow down? It is going to be hard to get those last millions vaccinated.
I see long lines in front of vaccination centers in Kolkata every day. So, no lack of demand yet.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Pratyush »

In India we will accomplish a nearly universal vaccination rate. We are quite tallented and have in the past be very successful in conducting mass immunization programs.

This is not going to be any different.

The foolish attempts to cause vaccine hesitancy early in the campaign have failed quite spectacularly.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Suraj »

Raja wrote:It is going to be very interesting to see how much slow down we see in 1st doses going forward. Most countries have struggled after 60% coverage and we already past that. Can India make it to 80% without a major slow down? It is going to be hard to get those last millions vaccinated.
I don't see any basis for the 'hesitancy at 70%' claim. You can't transpose western conditions to India. The US has an appallingly bad attitude towards medicines. They are at least a generation removed from the foundation of universal vaccination as a public health goal. The current generation are at least 30% crackpots and their blindly politically motivated followers who simply don't want to get a vaccine.

Those conditions don't exist in India, outside of small clusters like those that held out against polio universal immunization. I advise people to stop peddling that '70% barrier' meme. Don't turn it into a self fulfilling prophecy.

The public health system knows how to vaccinate universally. India is at almost 70% first dose cover with vaccinations still going on overdrive. It's around 1245pm now and CoWin says 3.35 million done already. We started the day on 860 million after doing around 5 million doses between 7pm Saturday and 7am Monday. These are crazy high numbers - more than Europe and North America on what's a weekend public holiday. Presumably we'll do around 7-10M again today.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Karan M »

Covaxin being investigated in combo with nasal vaccine

https://www.business-standard.com/artic ... h-covaxin-
121092500034_1.html
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Raja »

Suraj wrote: I don't see any basis for the 'hesitancy at 70%' claim.
I did not make any claim. However, regardless of hesitancy or harder to reach population, logically it gets increasingly tough as the pie gets smaller. Once we reach near 100% coverage, it will be interesting to see how the rate changed overtime. Obviously, this will be confounded by vaccine supply issues in the early days.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Pratyush »

The only criticism of vaccination rates is that high scores are not getting converted into centuries.

Today for eg looks like another case of nervous 90s.

7.6 million a few moments ago.

Will they score a century?
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by VinodTK »

Suraj
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Suraj »

Raja wrote:
Suraj wrote: I don't see any basis for the 'hesitancy at 70%' claim.
I did not make any claim. However, regardless of hesitancy or harder to reach population, logically it gets increasingly tough as the pie gets smaller. Once we reach near 100% coverage, it will be interesting to see how the rate changed overtime. Obviously, this will be confounded by vaccine supply issues in the early days.
If it is logical, what is the logical and quantifiable basis ? I'm serious. Arguments of this kind need well established foundation. A collection of intuitive possibilities and idle thought processes will not do.

A lot of what people argue is vaccine hesitancy involves a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. They have some information that suggests side effects. They cannot contextualize it enough against the benefits. The human psyche is risk averse - we feel more pain losing Rs.1000 than winning tht much.

Public policy needs to counteract misinformation and idle conversation that leads to either laziness or risk averse behavior. So if there are 'logical basis', it should be spelled out in detail and counteracting public policy should be considered.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Raja »

It is just a hypothesis as most things in life require more effort to get to 100%. There are many other reasons why it can be more difficult to reach certain sections of the society which have nothing to do with vaccine hesitancy. I think I was the one of the few in this thread arguing against over subscribing to vaccine hesitancy theory when we were having supply issues in March/April.

Anyways, let's see, what happens.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by SandeepA »

Meanwhile its another 1cr today with UP alone doing close to 3.5million. Mindblowing numbers and even BRF is so used to it that we are not tracking this as religiously as before.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Suraj »

It's like sitting in a Shinkansen. It's cool at the beginning but then the scenery is going past so far it's all a blur. What matters after a point is just that we're going like the Shinkansen.

Here's what my 7pm data looks like the past 10 days:
18 Sep 804372331
19 Sep 807724879
20 Sep 817395763
21 Sep 825780128
22 Sep 833346676
23 Sep 840821190
24 Sep 848280511
25 Sep 855478279
26 Sep 860159011
27 Sep 869379970
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by disha »

It is a situation now that if the portal misses the last digit, everybody will weigh in and pass commentary. Several op-eds will be written and opposition will create a ruckus and the penguins will start investigating the algorithm powering the portal. They will pass commentary on why COBOL is a better language and how to solve the Y2K digit issue.

---

In the meantime, check out the news on DARPA, the non-profit which was funding the coronavirus research and the furrin site activation plan and the Wuhan lab and the Batwoman at Wuhan lab.

Apparently in 2018 there was a study proposed to make SARS-Cov-2 from SARS which is fully infectious in lab and innoculate the bats near Wuhan so that they do not in future create a coronavirus naturally and give us the pandemic. Crazy. I am not making it up. Check the news (assuming it is covered in MSM)
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Mort Walker »

Raja wrote:It is just a hypothesis as most things in life require more effort to get to 100%. There are many other reasons why it can be more difficult to reach certain sections of the society which have nothing to do with vaccine hesitancy. I think I was the one of the few in this thread arguing against over subscribing to vaccine hesitancy theory when we were having supply issues in March/April.

Anyways, let's see, what happens.
If you look at vaccinations for all diseases in India, then you'll see it is somewhere over 80%. In the case of COVID-19, given how deadly it is, I would guess it will be well over that.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by hnair »

Raja wrote:I hope that the vaccine export is kept minimal till the end of the year. We need to get through Diwali and beyond without any major new wave. But I guess that with almost 70% of the adults vaccinated with one dose, India is at the cusp of running out of people willing to get vaccinated and there should be some excess supply.
Raja, just FYI, this is the line that looked like vaccine hesitancy for me too. Maybe you meant something else?

India had logistics issues due to the short timeframe given by the pandemic's progression, but we are not seeing any big political or social or religious based hesitancy clusters like the sort we are witnessing in US from the loony-right. Laziness and inertia, yes, but not anti-vaxxer type paranoia.

In the past, India has done quite well in pushing through the last percentages, by roping in politicians of all hues, pop-culture figures etc in campaigns like polio, aids etc. The recent spike for the PM's birthday is one such campaign, where the vast and well organized BJP political machinery was used to push through record numbers in states where the percentages needed attention. The non-BJP states too will start doing that, once they see the political advantages of such moves. It is a good talking point during election time and makes good politics too.

I would any day bet on the positive political pressure of Indian democracy in supporting commonsense backed by science than the zero-sum nature of what American democracy has devolved into in recent years. (Am not counting the isolated instance of loons going after hacks and quacks in India!)
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Raja »

Your are absolutely right. I shouldn't have used that phrasing. Anyways, I will be very happy if we can muscle through the last millions.

On another topic, I wonder if we couldn't have tied resumption of vaccine export to fair and preferential evaluation of covaxin certification by WHO?
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by arshyam »

Raja wrote:On another topic, I wonder if we couldn't have tied resumption of vaccine export to fair and preferential evaluation of covaxin certification by WHO?
That wouldn't play out well - most of our exports will be to developing nations similar to us, and I am pretty sure none of these countries will have trouble with our vaccination certificates. A reciprocal arrangement too would be quite easy to operationalize here. It's the so-called developed countries, read gora-bhestern that will keep playing these shenanigans, and our vaccine exports to them are minimal. If there is an opportunity with their supply chains, then sure, we should apply pressure at a few points.

For sure, our vax exports should be through bilateral arrangements and some through Covax (so the recipients would mostly be the developing world), and any direct exports to western countries should be withheld or shipped with least priority. I just think the opportunity for these exports is minimal. Anyway, GoI knows to play this game, let's see how they deal with this issue.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Pratyush »

Suraj, if you remember the comment form one of the niti ayog members. He had stated that we need to vaccinate 1 crores people every day from August in order to vaccinate the entire adult population by 31st December.

However fast we are traveling. We are not traveling as fast as we need to go. I think gaps in covaxin production program are slowing us down.

The funny thing is that most of us cannot help in any way to enhance the production numbers.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Suraj »

India should avoid exports until CoWin is a universally accepted platform and both Covaxin and BioE (zyCov-D too but it doesn’t have volume) are WHO EUL approved .
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by chetak »

The truth that the media hid about covid deaths in the US while they showed on endless loop, invasive aerial shots of the burning funeral pyres in India

and Indian buddhi dehati aurat journo camped out in Hindu graveyards invading privacy and denying dignity even in death to those who had suffered enough and passed on, all in that elusive quest for that evanescent pulitzer

a pox on her house

via@SushantBSinha

WATCH VIDEO
Last edited by chetak on 28 Sep 2021 20:59, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by yensoy »

Suraj wrote:India should avoid exports until CoWin is a universally accepted platform and both Covaxin and BioE (zyCov-D too but it doesn’t have volume) are WHO EUL approved .
Unfortunately it's the western countries which are reluctant to approve CoWin but the African and other 3rd world countries that hurt when we do not export. We have to push acceptance into WHO and we have to export to help our less developed partner nations, these are parallel tracks.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Suraj »

Pratyush wrote:Suraj, if you remember the comment form one of the niti ayog members. He had stated that we need to vaccinate 1 crores people every day from August in order to vaccinate the entire adult population by 31st December.

However fast we are traveling. We are not traveling as fast as we need to go. I think gaps in covaxin production program are slowing us down.
But why are we projecting something some Niti Aayog person said in front of a camera as only thing that must be achieved in order to have been successful ? This rhetorical claim is mostly noise. I'm not interested in it.

Mathematically, it is not possible to complete in December if without substantial supplies of a vaccine with a 1-month dose interval, unless we do 250 million Covishield first doses by next week. That's because those first doses will be due 3 months from now in December.

At the current rate we'll still likely get saturation coverage done before most of the larger countries of the developed world, who are facing a combination of political resistance to vaccination and what appears to be a production scaling issue with Pfizer that no one's really talking much about.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Suraj »

yensoy wrote:
Suraj wrote:India should avoid exports until CoWin is a universally accepted platform and both Covaxin and BioE (zyCov-D too but it doesn’t have volume) are WHO EUL approved .
Unfortunately it's the western countries which are reluctant to approve CoWin but the African and other 3rd world countries that hurt when we do not export. We have to push acceptance into WHO and we have to export to help our less developed partner nations, these are parallel tracks.
I know that. So what ? The western countries want to use Covax/Gavi to show themselves as benefactors but with a production power based in China and India.

This is a power game. Pfizer talked up making 2-3 billion doses a year. India alone is already past 1 billion dose production and going at 250M/month now, which means we'll hit 2 billion just past end of year.
Image

When you have power - and production above all else is power as China demonstrates - you use it. We don't have to suffer fools who simultaneously accept US paper certs and claim CoWin 'could be faked'.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by yensoy »

^^^^ Pfizer & Moderna will be very happy to have us stop production and exports so they can corner the market for themselves. I feel we should have never stopped exports, but slowed it down to a trickle and done so very selectively while we got our population vaccinated. Now that we have increased production, we should push these fellows out of the global market instead of taking hostage of nations who will be forced to switch to Pfizer/Moderna if they have the money or Sinovac if they don't.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Suraj »

I haven't seen Pfizer demonstrate the kind of scaling that SII have done. Despite starting earlier, getting enormous financial resources and backing, Pfizer out of two EU and two US plants has produced on par with or less than SII is doing now out of five lines in a single plant in Pune. To date, Pfizer supplies total 900-950M doses, around the same as SII's output so far.

Ditto for Moderna - the above graph is the cumulative total. September alone, Covaxin outproduced Moderna output from two US sites plus two EU sites (Netherlands and Switzerland/Spain).

We understand Covaxin production needs to ramp up more. Sure they're taking a little longer than anticipated. The reality also is that this problem is universal - everyone is facing scaling issues.

Meanwhile a lot of people - even supposed supporters - were busy beating up Poonawala online in May. They use the 'but we must be vigilant citizens' card. That is mostly BS, unless they've spend substantial effort to dig into months of data and have a nuanced reason to complain SII are failing to execute. It was clearly not true - I tracked data, and I wrote about it in articles too - and SII have proven themselves. BB will get there.

With a PM and a Health Min who are extremely hands on - Mandaviya apparently is in touch daily with SII/BB to ensure they get anything they need - we have a system that's working smoothly and we see a 7 million day (like today) as meh. 10 million is nice, but the afterglow recedes in minutes now. And why not ? We've had over half a dozen 10million performance days. Now a real shock-n-awe day would be 50 million.

In September to date, there have been 834 million vaccinations globally. 224 million (27%) by India. Second is China with 16.2%.
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by vera_k »

Not sure if this news was noted. I interpret this to mean that the government has a good handle on exports. What vaccines are exported mainly depends on what vaccines are required locally for immunizations going forward.

India likely to allow export of Sputnik Light COVID shot this month
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Re: Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Post by Suraj »

Sputnik and Sputnik Light are not part of the official procurement system at all. They've only been accessible to private buyers. Presumably even they prefer to access the Covishield or Covaxin supply instead.
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