By PTI
NEW DELHI: Unvaccinated individuals account for 92 per cent of Covid deaths in India so far this year, the government said Thursday, while asserting the country is in a “vaccine-protected low coronavirus phase” now and it is “rational” to open schools, colleges, and normal affairs of society while taking necessary precautions.
Addressing a press conference here, Union Health Ministry officials said high vaccination led to reduced morbidity and mortality due to COVID-19 in the recent wave driven by the Omicron variant.
“It is evident that vaccines and wide vaccination coverage of a very high order played a very important role in protecting lives in the recent surge,” NITI Aayog member (health) Dr VK Paul said.
“The vaccine has protected the nation in the surge that we just experienced,” he said.
Presenting data from the Indian Vaccine Tracker, ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava said the COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in mortality prevention has been measured as per which the first dose is 98.9 per cent effective in preventing mortality, while both doses are 99.3 per cent effective.
India is the second country in the world to have its own vaccine tracker, he said, adding the Indian vaccine tracker has data of 94.4 crore individuals — 73.9 crore fully vaccinated, 15.3 crore partially vaccinated and 5.09 crore are unvaccinated.
“India witnessed considerably lower number of deaths and cases during the Omicron surge due to vaccine development, its rapid deployment, acceptance and wide scale coverage,” he stated.
Elaborating on the impact of Covid vaccination, he said death in hospitalised patients was 10.2 per cent in fully vaccinated individuals with 91 per cent having comorbidities, and 21.8 per cent in unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people with 83 per cent having comorbidities.
Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said that with the whole of government and whole of society approach India has been able to avert the crisis of potentially devastating magnitude of Covid seen in other countries.
He said 97 per cent of Indian adults have been administered the first dose while 82 per cent are fully vaccinated.
He said 74 per cent of adolescents between 15-18 years of age have been administered their first doses of COVID-19 vaccine and 39 per cent given both doses.
Also, 2.03 crore precaution doses have been given to those aged 60 and above with comorbidities.
He said the efforts of healthcare, frontline workers coupled with vaccination coverage helped in effective containment of the recent Covid surge.
Paul said, “We are in a vaccine-enabled low coronavirus phase. It is rational to open schools, colleges, resorts, economic activities and normal affairs of society. But we should be watchful and vigilant.”
“It is our responsibility to ensure that the surveillance remains intact, watchful, scientific and systematic so that we are able to pick up early signals of an unfortunate change in the current state of pandemic towards upsurge or change in the behaviour of the virus,” he said, asking people to wear mask.
Agarwal said while globally the Omicron surge led to a peak almost 4.68 times the previous reported peak, India’s efforts “have yielded positive results”.
Going by that magnitude, the fear was India may wintess 19.39 lakh cases per day.
Presenting an analysis of cases reported during second and third surge, Agarwal said during the second wave it took 49 days for cases to reach the peak of 4,14,188 on May 7 from 40,953 cases being reported on March 20, 2021 and 68 days to fall down to 40,255 on July 14.
During the third wave driven by Omicron variant, it took 18 days for the cases the reach the peak of 3,47,254 on January 21, 2022 from January 4 when 37,379 infections were registered and then 24 days to decline to 34,113 on February 14, 2022, he said.
The number of districts with a positivity rate of more than 10 per cent has reduced from 141 (in the week ending February 9) to 29 districts (in the week ending March 2) and presently there are 34 districts with positivity rate between 5-10 per cent, he said.
Presently, there are 671 districts with a positivity rate less than 5 per cent.
