Now that the United Kingdom will begin rolling out Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, Indians are wondering about their chances of getting one, too. But with that fervent hope comes the question: do all Indians even need the coronavirus vaccine?
At the moment, the Indian government is of the opinion that vaccination against the deadly pandemic may be needed only to the extent of “breaking the chain”. If we are able to vaccinate a critical mass of people and break virus transmission, then we may not have to vaccinate the entire population,” Balram Bhargava, director general of India’s nodal medical body Indian Council of Medical Research, said on December 1.
This statement was in response to a question about how long it would take to immunise all of India’s population of over 1.3 billion people for Covid-19, during a health ministry press conference. According to Rajesh Bhushan, the health ministry’s secretary, the government had never spoken about inoculating…