Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

Uttam · Post by **Uttam** » 05 Mar 2021 00:31

Another 1 million today. Cumulative to 1.77 crores. Great improvement but we need it to go even faster.

Are the vaccines being administered only in the existing medical facilities? OR temporary vaccination centers are being set in marriage halls, stadiums, etc?

Here is my experience with the US. The vaccination rate was sluggish until various state governments took vaccination out of medical facilities like hospitals to sports complexes, etc. I volunteer at vaccination facilities. In a typical arena (about 5 tennis courts, we are able to vaccinate about 600 - 1000 people in a day. Most people coming there have an appointment but their registration happens on site. We typically have 20 vaccinators and 40 volunteers who perform various tasks like traffic management, registration, etc. The US state govt. were being criticized for a very slow rate until the middle of Jan with an average daily rate was about 7.5 lakhs. With improved availability now it has risen to over 2 million.

India has 718 districts and 5570 tehsils (info source Wikipedia). If the tehsil administration sets up a vaccination center in each tehsil with 20 vaccinators (doctors and nurses) and 50 volunteers, this can result in the daily number reaching 5 million. (I am assuming there is no supply constraint!)

Shameek · Post by **Shameek** » 05 Mar 2021 00:38

^^ This probably varies from city to city, but I have not heard of mass vaccination sites in India. Some private companies had offered to set up similar 'camps' but don't know if that will be implemented. From my parents experience, they are not able to get the Cowin site to work reliably. They contacted some local hospitals on the list and were told that they had not received the vaccine or any instructions on how to administer it or at what rate. Some hospitals are saying max 50 people per day. I hope this will all get better after the first 10-15 days.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 05 Mar 2021 02:09

Over the first three days of Phase 2, they have ramped up vaccinations from 550K to 770K to 995K and now over 1 million on day 4. This means the system is scaling up an working out its bottlenecks in a predictable manner.

The suggestion to have mass vaccination sites is a very good one. Nearby, the local American football stadium has been defined as a mass vaccination site. The respective local governments should organize high throughput locations like cricket stadiums for the purpose.

They've already demonstrated the ability to scale up to >1m rate in a smooth manner, and can increase to 2-5m a day . At the upper end, that is 100 million a month even with low vaccination rate on weekends.

Atmavik · Post by **Atmavik** » 05 Mar 2021 02:56

there was news of allowing companies to vaccinate their employees. this will give a small boost but will add to the count. infy alone has 200k employees.

vera_k · Post by **vera_k** » 05 Mar 2021 03:09

Hearing from city based friends and family that many private hospitals and medical colleges have received an ample supply of vaccines. Appointments are tough to find still, but easier than here in the USA as the appointments are booked via a centralized system, and allows scheduling weeks out.

darshan · Post by **darshan** » 05 Mar 2021 03:28

Things are lot better in India than US.

I personally know of three big hospital systems in US midwest that took possession of way more doses than they needed and sat on them. Starting from day 1. Their policy was to only give it to their patients irrespective of govt phasing guidelines. Even if you were a first responder from a different hospital system, they didn't give you one. Surprisingly, only very few medical staff even took an objection to this sort of policy.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 05 Mar 2021 04:07

Extrapolating numbers a little here:
On day 3, 692K vaccinations were made up to 7pm. The end of day performance was 994K .
On day 4, 1.09M vaccinations were made up to 7pm itself. Suggests an end of day figure close to 1.5 million. We will know in a few hours when data is published by MoHFW.

Atmavik · Post by **Atmavik** » 05 Mar 2021 04:20

Sometimes we as a people come together and and achieve great feats. Hope this boosts our morale and kick starts a new era of development and progress

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 05 Mar 2021 06:25

#COVID19 - Outbreak In India
@outbreak_india
·
1h
Day 48: India #vaccination update on 04-Mar till 7 PM

Total Vaccinated: 1,77,11,287 Up-pointing triangle 10,93,954

Dose1: 1,45,74,168 Up-pointing triangle 8,34,141
Dose2: 31,37,119 Up-pointing triangle 2,59,813

this will go up by tomorrow morning

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 05 Mar 2021 09:22

Suraj wrote:Extrapolating numbers a little here:
On day 3, 692K vaccinations were made up to 7pm. The end of day performance was 994K .
On day 4, 1.09M vaccinations were made up to 7pm itself. Suggests an end of day figure close to 1.5 million. We will know in a few hours when data is published by MoHFW.

The final number for March 4 was 1.39 million . A very good ramp up over 4 days: 550k to 770k to 995k to 1400k . Hopefully today it will exceed 1.5 million.

Data up to March 2. The curve has since gotten steeper:

Raja · Post by **Raja** » 05 Mar 2021 11:58

Bangladesh and most other South Asian countries are doing quite well per capita basis. Only exception is terroristan.

milindc · Post by **milindc** » 05 Mar 2021 12:09

Good experience with vaccine shot at Hyd private hospital for parents. They were given covishield and the process was complete in 40 minutes and 30 minutes more after the shot. We made the booking online for afternoon. Luckily I decided to visit the facility in morning to check if there is some pre-processing that needs to be completed. The facility was packed with people who didn't have appointment and the staff was struggling to manage them. Around 50% of the vaccine seekers were walk-ins with no prior appointment. They instituted a token system and I got the tokens for afternoon. I think without the tokens, it might have taken 4+ hours even with appointment.

The facility is scaled for giving 200 shots per day. The actual vaccination shot is done by just 2 nurses and there was no queue there.

Major problem seems to the 'co-win' backend which is overwhelmed with the requests during the day. At every stage of the vaccination, people need to update the co-win system so that the vaccination certificate is generated. Every backend request is taking 10-30 seconds. I'm hoping they will fix this issue soon. With that done, I think it will just be supply constraint.

g.sarkar · Post by **g.sarkar** » 05 Mar 2021 12:33

On a personal note, today I had an appointment in a local CVS pharmacy and received the Moderna vaccine. I had registered on line, and received an appointment in about 3 days time. Also, I was given an appointment in 30 days time for a second shot. There was no choice, I had to take Moderna or not get anything at all. I did not have to pay. But they took my insurance information. A young Sardarji administrated the shot. I asked him how many shots he administrated in a day, he said about 100. Things were moving on quite smoothly. I expect a majority of the population in California to receive the vaccination in a short period of time.
Gautam

Atmavik · Post by **Atmavik** » 05 Mar 2021 12:51

My parents got vaccinated today at a private hospital in hyderabad. they had an appointment but when they reached the hospital were told that the vaccines were not there. my parents made a few phone calls to a friend who is in hospital management and were then told they will get the vaccine from VIP quota ( what ever that is).

once the mess was sorted it took about 1 hr. they were charged rs 150 as a senior citizen discount. they got covisheild.

dhyana · Post by **dhyana** » 05 Mar 2021 12:55

As others have said previously, great news on the Covaxin front. 81% is at the higher end of expected efficacy with respect to that (tried and tested) vaccine platform. And should be better than the AZ/Oxford vaccine to maintain reasonable efficacy against variants. GOI will hopefully augment/sustain vaccination numbers.

OTOH, this is an example of how not to run a successful campaign:
Govt has no plan to buy vaccines anytime soon, PAC told (from Yawn)
COVID-19 vaccine updates in Pakistan and around the world

Jokers are clowning around at 500K donated doses, period. And of course whatever PLA-dispensed provisions were given to the the Crore Commanders. This is what is expected from Iron Brother? The bigger problem here is that thru their general incompetence, Pakistan would remain a potentially large reservoir of mutating viral strains, endangering all their neighbors. Shades of their inability to complete other vaccination programs, a la polio.

Uttam · Post by **Uttam** » 05 Mar 2021 19:51

Here is an update from my elderly relatives in India. Everybody who wanted to get vaccinated has already received their first dose. A few skeptics need some convincing. My dad, who is a retired Doctor, is working on that.

Most of them went to Govt. hospitals to get it as a walk-in. A few went to private facilities, equally satisfied. I got reports from Haryana, U.P., J&K, and Gujarat.

The best arrangement I heard is in Jammu. There, camps have been set up in various community places like temples, masjids, gurudwaras, etc. No need for an appointment. Just walk in.

Overall, everybody is very satisfied.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 05 Mar 2021 22:58

The 7pm update PR: Day 49 update at 7pm

Total 10,34,672vaccine doses were given till 7 pmtoday, the forty-ninth day of nationwide COVID19 vaccination. Out of which8,25,537beneficiaries were vaccinated for 1st dose and 2,09,135HCWs and FLWsreceived 2nd dose of vaccine as per the provisional report. Final reports would be completed for the day by late tonight.

Yesterday, the 7pm update was 1.09 million, and topped out at 1.4 million. Should be similar numbers today.

1.4-1.5 million sustained pace by day 4 is extremely good. The US hit 1.7 million per day only in mid February after 2 months of vaccinations. It has now increased and touched 2 million per day. We can hope to see similar or better rate by next week, given the scale up from 500K/day to 1.5M per day in less than a week.

Zynda · Post by **Zynda** » 05 Mar 2021 23:10

My parents got an appointment on March 29th...but BBMP is saying that from Monday 8th, more hospitals will be added to the vaccination network...so hoping for an earlier date. But at least by Ph-4 i.e. last phase, GoI should think about mass vaccination i.e. at play grounds etc. Another idea is to allow mid to large diagnostic centers to administer vaccines as well...at least in urban centers & Tier-2 cities.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 05 Mar 2021 23:12

I think the government's thinking here is:
1. The current Ph-2 target group are smaller in number. Demographically, 50-55% of population is sub-35 years old. How much of population is the Phase 2 target group ? 10% tops ?
2. They are high risk for infection in a large group setting, so do things in a clinical hospital setting where control over the process is clearer.
Once this group is out of the way, the lower risk groups can be mass vaccinated at 10m doses/day or more.

Ambar · Post by **Ambar** » 05 Mar 2021 23:42

The sooner the better. Like Darshanji mentioned in the political thread, as cases creep up in summer the reluctance to get vaccinated will drop and there will be a rush. The dreaded "corona warriors" FB page after pausing few months is posting once again , 3 more doctors succumbed to covid in the last 2 weeks, 2 of them were in their 20s. MH hit 10k in new cases today, the first time in over 3 months. MH's case is curious, despite the incompetence of the state govt, the fact is MH is the wealthiest state in the union and has a lot of resources. Its not like the behavior of people in MH is any different to other parts of India, so it is surprising how bad the numbers are compared to rest of India.

vera_k · Post by **vera_k** » 06 Mar 2021 00:38

Keep an eye out for any vaccine production capacity numbers. The numbers I remember from earlier are sufficient to support about 2.5M doses per day (50M/month for Oxford-AZ, and 25M/month for Covaxin). If those are near reality, there will have to be prioritized allocation of vaccines for quite some time.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 06 Mar 2021 04:11

The World Needs Syringes. He Jumped In to Make 5,900 Per Minute

In late November, an urgent email popped up in the inbox of Hindustan Syringes & Medical Devices, one of the world’s largest syringe makers.

It was from UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children, and it was desperately seeking syringes. Not just any would do. These syringes must be smaller than usual. They had to break if used a second time, to prevent spreading disease through accidental recycling.

“I thought, ‘No issues,’” said Rajiv Nath, the company’s managing director, who has sunk millions of dollars into preparing his syringe factories for the vaccination onslaught. “We could deliver it possibly faster than anybody else.”

As countries jostle to secure enough vaccine doses to put an end to the COVID-19 outbreak, a second scramble is unfolding for syringes. Vaccines aren’t all that useful if health care professionals lack a way to inject them into people.

Officials in the United States and the European Union have said they don’t have enough vaccine syringes. In January, Brazil restricted exports of syringes and needles when its vaccination effort fell short.

Further complicating the rush, the syringes have to be the right type. Japan revealed last month that it might have to discard millions of doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine if it couldn’t secure enough special syringes that could draw out a sixth dose from its vials. In January, the Food and Drug Administration advised health care providers in the United States that they could extract more doses from the Pfizer vials after hospitals there discovered that some contained enough for a sixth — or even a seventh — person.

“A lot of countries were caught flat-footed,” said Ingrid Katz, the associate director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “It seems like a fundamental irony that countries around the world have not been fully prepared to get these types of syringes.”

The world needs between 8 billion and 10 billion syringes for COVID-19 vaccinations alone, experts say. In previous years, only 5% to 10% of the estimated 16 billion syringes used worldwide were meant for vaccination and immunization, said Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think tank in Washington, and an expert on health care supply chains.

The United States is the world’s largest syringe supplier by sales, according to Fitch Solutions, a research firm. The United States and China are neck and neck in exports, with combined annual shipments worth $1.7 billion. While India is a small player globally, with only $32 million in exports in 2019, Nath of Hindustan Syringes sees a big opportunity.

Each of his syringes sells for only three cents, but his total investment is considerable. He invested nearly $15 million to mass-produce specialty syringes, equal to roughly one-sixth of his annual sales, before purchase orders were even in sight. In May, he ordered new molds from suppliers in Italy, Germany and Japan to make a variety of barrels and plungers for his syringes.

Nath added 500 workers to his production lines, which crank out more than 5,900 syringes per minute at factories spread over 11 acres in a dusty industrial district outside New Delhi. With Sundays and public holidays off, the company churns out nearly 2.5 billion a year, though it plans to scale up to 3 billion by July.

Hindustan Syringes has a long history of supplying UNICEF immunization programs in some of the poorest countries, where syringe reuse is common and one of the main sources of deadly infections, including HIV and hepatitis.

In late December, when the World Health Organization cleared Pfizer’s vaccine for emergency use, Robert Matthews, a UNICEF contract manager in Copenhagen, and his team needed to find a manufacturer that could produce millions of syringes.

“We went, ‘Oh, dear!’” said Matthews, as they looked for a syringe that would meet WHO specifications and was compact for shipping. Hindustan Syringes’ product, he said, was the first.

The company is set to begin shipping 3.2 million of those syringes soon, UNICEF said, provided they clear another quality check.

Nath has sold 15 million syringes to the Japanese government, he said, and over 400 million to India for its COVID-19 inoculation drive, one of the largest in the world. More are in line, including UNICEF, for which he has offered to produce about 240 million more, and Brazil, he said.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 06 Mar 2021 09:24

Day 49: India #vaccination update on 05-Mar till 7 PM

Total Vaccinated: 1,90,40,175 Up-pointing triangle 10,34,672

Dose1: 1,56,22,372 Up-pointing triangle 8,25,537
Dose2: 34,17,803 Up-pointing triangle 2,09,135

Hope by 8 AM the actual numbers are 15 lakhs

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 06 Mar 2021 09:56

The report is out
1.49 million vaccinated
Cumulative total 19.5 million so far

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 06 Mar 2021 10:05

Suraj wrote:The report is out
1.49 million vaccinated
Cumulative total 19.5 million so far

My SIL says they are releasing them next week to Diagnostic centers ... That will be awesome. Do we have enough supply?

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 06 Mar 2021 10:17

Opening up vaccinations to diagnostic centers, workplaces and mass locations would help increase the daily rate significantly. So far week 1 has been a great success. The US reached 1.7 million per day in mid February two months after starting. We are at 1.5 million per day within the first week of gen population vaccination. More importantly we scaled up from 550K on day 1 to 1.5M on day 5, increasing smoothly each day. This shows that the process scaled manageably. Now to scale up to 3M or even 5M per day.

Let’s say they do 5M/day for 6 days a week, assuming Sat+Sun is only as much as a weekday. Weekly rate will be 30M and monthly will be 120M. Already despite lower total count the per day rate is close to US:

Atmavik · Post by **Atmavik** » 06 Mar 2021 10:30

vijayk wrote:
Suraj wrote:The report is out
1.49 million vaccinated
Cumulative total 19.5 million so far
My SIL says they are releasing them next week to Diagnostic centers ... That will be awesome. Do we have enough supply?

great idea. adding Diagnostic centers will push the numbers up.

Raja · Post by **Raja** » 06 Mar 2021 14:02

Will vaccination continue throughout the weekend now?

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 06 Mar 2021 17:37

My parents got vaccinated yesterday in Hyd at a local private hospital which is close by. Not a lot of wait but steady stream of visitors through out the day. No prior registration on Arogyasetu is needed. Adhaar card is required. Multiple kiosks are setup where patients are registered, then passed on to get BP, temperature etc checked, if all OK queued to get the shot. Total time < 1hr. Asked to wait 30 mins in observation space before leaving. They got Covisheild. Charged Rs. 250/- No Sr citizen discount in this hospital. Second dose in 30 days. Even younger people can get a shot now since vaccine doses seem to be available in plenty.

My mother has developed a slight fever and some body ache today. Father seems OK.

Getting vaccinated seems well organised, widely available in big cities, almost a non-event. India wide numbers should go up very rapidly in the coming weeks. 1M+ per day should be easily achievable.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 06 Mar 2021 17:55

Cyranoji, we already did 1.39M a day, see above.

You have to hand it to the Americans, inspite of using a more difficult to transport vaccine, they have ramped up steeply and have gone to 80M. We should catch them up in a month though...

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 06 Mar 2021 18:28

Unfathomable why there is so much complexity in getting organised and administering vaccinations in EU even today, especially in France where 52M adults need to be vaccinated, which is a fraction of India's population. First vaccinations started around Jan 3rd, now 2 months later we are barely hitting 100K vaccinations/day.

Three vaccines for COVID-19 are authorised in France, 100% cost borne by social security :
Pfizer/BioNtech - Comirnaty® ;
COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna®;
Le COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca®.

Healthcare workers were covered first, then they have covered old age nursing homes, now people 50-74 can get the vaccine after a preliminary doctor examination.

As per media reports:

France, via the European Commission, has pre-purchased 200 million doses of anti-Covid vaccines from different laboratories (68 million should be available by July 1). Several contracts have been signed by the European Commission: with the pharmaceutical companies BioNTech-Pfizer, Moderna, the American Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, and the German CureVac. France should benefit from the same vaccines as the other countries of the European Union. "The number of doses being distributed according to the population of each member state" recalled the President of the French Republic on November 24.

→ France has ordered 30 million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine for deliveries until the fall of 2021. It should then receive 20 million doses until the end of the year, or 50 million in total.
→ France has pre-ordered 24 million doses of the Moderna vaccine expected in 2021.
→ France has pre-ordered 44 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The French Govt has been announcing targets to X million vaccinated by this date etc and has been moving goalposts, and missing all of them so far. All 3 approved vaccines are sourced from production sites in EU plagued by production problems. Entire batches had to be throw out due to temperature control problems while scaling production in Belgium. France's target of 15M persons vaccinated by end of March will be surely missed. Latest target announced is 30 M by summer (1st dose ? Both doses?!!

) which is deliberately vague. The entire supply chain, preparation, mobilisation all have been screwed up needlessly, slowing down the pace considerably. The less said about the fkcups by the EU mandarins in Brussels the better. Hope French health authorities will pull up their socks won't wake up in a few weeks and discover they don't have required no of syringes etc.

No one wants to bring up the decay at Institut Pasteur, a pioneering research institute home to a bunch of Nobel laureates which produced vaccines against Anthrax, Rabies etc. failed to produce an m-RNA type vaccine like Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna - it seems they realised they were too far behind and gave up ! A few months later they also gave up on a "viral vector" type vaccine when initial tests on their candidates showed poor efficiency, whereas China, Russia and India have succeeded. They did some work on repurposing known medicines to treat Covid which didn't go very far either. Lamentable !

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 06 Mar 2021 18:30

Tanaji wrote:Cyranoji, we already did 1.39M a day, see above.

You have to hand it to the Americans, inspite of using a more difficult to transport vaccine, they have ramped up steeply and have gone to 80M. We should catch them up in a month though...

Unke pas (a)MA(zon) hai

But India has to, and do even more, because we have perhaps 700-800M people to vaccinate.

Also, we cannot treat this as a mere one time exercise. If the immune protection lasts 6 months or so (which we don't know for sure right now), by the time we vaccinate everyone, we may have to restart again to administer booster doses or cycle 2 vaccination or an updated vaccine against a new virus variant that is not getting countered by the current vaccine.

When herd immunity reaches a level across the globe and the risk drops to the level of common flu we will be finally out of the woods with this Covid-19.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 06 Mar 2021 20:20

Regarding your comment about the decay at Institut Pasteur, a similar criminal negligence has been done by GoI with respect to the Haffkine institute in Mumbai. At a time it was in the forefront of the vaccination programme and even now produces rabies vaccines. Sadly the government has deliberately withheld funding and in some cases refused to authorise purchases of key ingredients required to produce vaccines. Some say this is at the behest of Poonawala who until a decade ago was a supplier of horse serum to Haffkine.

It is criminal how part governments have allowed crony capitalism to run down a perfectly good government entity. Granted Haffkine would never have scaled up to the levels required but it could certainly have come up with its own vaccine that the private sector could have manufactured.

darshan · Post by **darshan** » 06 Mar 2021 20:39

At which mortality rate, govt entities need to start diverting efforts towards other diseases? What would be lessons learned and protocols implemented in future to nullify chinese usage of bio weapons?

darshan · Post by **darshan** » 06 Mar 2021 21:11

After Zimbabwe, Mexico Set To Greenlight Use Of India's Indigenous Covid-19 Vaccine
https://swarajyamag.com/news-brief/afte ... 19-vaccine

one of the technical committee of experts in the Latin American country on Friday (5 March) gave a unanimous favourable opinion to approve the Bharat Biotech's Covaxin.

Now, the report of the committee for new molecules will be forwarded to the federal medical safety commission's approval board.

Meanwhile, the Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical firm has already signed a deal with Brazil's health ministry to deliver 20 million shots of Covaxin.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 06 Mar 2021 22:49

Very surprising, but the Saturday vaccination count up to 7pm is already an best ever performance : 1.16 million!
Day 50 up to 7pm data
Sounds like Saturday figure will very likely exceed 1.5 million officially.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 06 Mar 2021 23:39

Suraj wrote:Very surprising, but the Saturday vaccination count up to 7pm is already an best ever performance : 1.16 million!
Day 50 up to 7pm data
Sounds like Saturday figure will very likely exceed 1.5 million officially.

we can scale up to 5 million in next few weeks, it will be awesome

Ambar · Post by **Ambar** » 06 Mar 2021 23:46

Many private institutes are expecting vaccine delivery within the next week or two, so we will hit 5 mil/day quite easily by end of the month. Accenture India has announced they will bear the cost to get all their employees and their dependents vaccinated, i hope more companies follow suit.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 06 Mar 2021 23:55

Just for some context, 5 million per day would be 2x the fastest ongoing rate anywhere in the world. The US hit 1.7 million per day in mid February after 2 months. They recently touched 2 million a day.

India ramped up from 500K a day during the HCW/FLW vaccination phase 1, to 1.5 million in the very first week of phase 2. I had hoped we could get close to 1 million, but the performance has been vastly superior. Phase 2 performance (since Monday March 1):
March 1: 550K
March 2: 770K
March 3: 995K
March 4: 1.39M
March 5: 1.49M
March 6: 1.16M up to 7pm, likely ~1.5M by EOD

That's extremely good. While total numbers for India is only 20 million now, the curve of the cumulative graph is almost the same as that of US because of nearly same daily rate.

darshan · Post by **darshan** » 07 Mar 2021 00:44

Indian vaccine giant SII warns of supply hit from US raw materials export ban
https://www.wionews.com/india-news/indi ... ban-368330

He said the recent invocation of the U.S. Defence Production Act to preserve vaccine raw materials for its own companies went against the global goal of sharing vaccines equitably.

The White House said this week it had used the act to help drugmaker Merck & Co produce Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.