COVID-19 Vaccine: Health Experts Caution PM Modi Against ‘False Hope’

New Delhi: Eminent public health experts in the country have appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “avoid any false hope” on an effective vaccine against COVID-19, stating that such a panacea “would not be available in the near future”.

Experts from Indian Public Health Association (IPHA), Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSM) and Indian Association said this in a joint statement on Monday.

“Vaccines do not have any role in the current ongoing coronavirus pandemic control in India. It must be assumed that an effective vaccine would not be available in near future. We must avoid false sense of hope that this panacea is just around the corner,” India Today quoted the statement as saying.

While the Union Health Ministry and ICMR have never admitted to any community transmission of COVID-19 in the country, the statement outlined that “cluster restrictions should be considered only in areas with no community transmission”. Besides, such restrictions must be imposed only after weighing the impact on the livelihood of the target population, it added.

It also recommended action plans that the government must take up at this point when the infection has seeped into not just in urban cities, but in rural areas as well.

The experts also said that in large cities where there has already been substantial spread, there is no advantage of creating containment zones and aggressive testing.

They also said, “Lockdown as a strategy for control should be discontinued.”

Instead, the focus should be to prevent deaths from coronavirus, they added.