India scripted history on Thursday 21-Oct-2021 when it vaccinated 100 crores of its citizen with the COVID-19 vaccine, within 9 months of rolling out its vaccination program. Based on the official reports India is 2^nd globally in terms of the number of its vaccination doses administered, and twice the number of vaccine doses administered by the US.

This is a remarkable achievement for the nation, which has never undertaken an immunization program of this scale for its adult population. This was achieved by relentless contribution by thousands of healthcare workers, stringent controls over the supply chain, and an efficient policy approach towards administering vaccines based on the advice of medical experts.

Serum Institute of India proved to be very critical for the nation to be a production house to meet national demand to vaccinate its people at scale. Bharat biotech who produced indigenous “Covaxin” based on inactivated Viral vector vaccine and Zydus Cadila’s DNA-based vaccine research successfully, is a testimony of national capabilities amongst very few nations who can produce vaccines on their own successfully.

Some of the key strategic decisions which helped the country to recover from the situation a few months back has been:

• Its resolve and commitment to get the majority of its population vaccinated as soon as possible
• Bi-partisan national strategy for vaccination, and centralized national vaccination program
• Working very closely with Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech to financially support them in expanding their production capacity
• Quick approvals for other vaccine providers like Sputnik, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson

We as a nation have achieved a major milestone that experts claim should reduce any possibility of a third-wave, but we still have a very long way to go:

• We have so far fully vaccinated (taken both doses) only 31% of the eligible population this needs to be scaled up to over 75% within the next 3 months
• We have partially vaccinated (single dose) over 70% of our adult population
• Policy decisions and medical advisory for under-18 are yet to be formalized globally. While the studies are still on, 30% of our population is still exposed to the virus
• The covid virus has a high potential of mutating very fast and some of the mutants could be highly contagious. Very close attention has to be paid to these evolutionary mutants and swift and effective steps have to be taken to prevent any waves in future

While the country stayed committed to its people, India as a country also demonstrated its magnanimity and commitment to humanity by supporting other countries who needed the vaccine by supplying vaccines to them for their people.

Covid has taught us very tough lessons, which is a very hard way. It is very unfortunate that some self-centered political groups, media houses, and pharma companies also saw this as an opportunity to capitalize on their gains  India’s handling of the Covid crisis, despite inadequate healthcare infrastructure, proved that a crisis like this could well be managed if the nation stood together.