 We are now firmly in the middle of the second major wave of COVID-19. At least in Delhi and some other states, Maharashtra seems to be dipping a little bit, but Delhi continues to register record of new cases every day and more deaths than it has ever seen. Hospitals are completely chock-a-block. There are hardly any ICU rooms. Running short of oxygen, running short of essential drugs, which doctors have been prescribing. And the situation is grim. Now, why did this happen? Obviously, there were four key things that were responsible. Number one, there are new variants and mutations which are appeared to be more infectious, more contagious. And the government of India and politicians in general, the ruling party to a large extent, congratulated us that they have defeated. India has defeated under the leadership of the Prime Minister, defeated COVID. And a lot of foreign newspapers, foreign institutions also fed that feeling of euphoria and complacency. And the average citizen believed it's over. Let's start socializing right now. And if last year out of every 10 people, two were saying that, you know, you guys are the rest of you are all paranoid. Nothing's going to happen. We have to live our lives by January, February. Out of every 10 people who had been cautious, eight were saying it is time to now move on. Don't overreact. It's not going to kill you. And we've seen what has happened. So there are the three things. But what is number four? The number four is India's flawed vaccination policy. We were simply not prepared. We were overconfident. We didn't think we need so many vaccines and we didn't have the numbers ready. We didn't even have a policy in place to decide how to vaccinate people quickly. Think of Israel. It's vaccinated enough people to ask its citizens to stop wearing masks anymore. Schools are being reopened, right? Our record is poor. Despite the fact that we had said that we are the fastest in vaccinating in our people. We have to be the fastest. We are among the, you know, the worst affected people with a high population. So we had to be the fastest we've burned. And that is what we're going to be focusing on. How to get past this, how to solve this in today's News Made Easy. All right. From the first of May, we know that everyone who's above 18 will be eligible to be vaccinated. And estimates suggest that there are about 94 odd crore people in India who are above the age of 18, 94 crore. And each one of them will need two doses that makes it 188 crore doses. You need 188 crore doses for these 94 crore people. But we might not decide to vaccinate all 100% of these 18 plus people. Maybe the initial target can be 70%. And why am I saying 70%? Because generally it is believed that if 70% of people are vaccinated against virus, then the chances of it moving ahead, expanding anymore, reduces sharply. So that is what is called herd immunity. Now even if it is 70% of people above the age of 18 who have to be vaccinated, remember, you'll still need about 132 crore doses. Out of this, about 10.7 crore people have received their first dose and another 1.6 crore people have got their second dose as well. This is the data as of 19th April. That means another 120 crore doses are required to achieve that 70% vaccination level, which will lead to herd immunity. And if I think of the number of doses required to cover 100% of the 18 plus population, we need another 176 crore doses. Now how do we achieve that? The question to ask is how many doses are we producing every month in India? As of now, we are producing 8 crore doses. And if you think about it, out of that, 7 crore is Kovishi being produced by Serum Institute of India and another crore is being produced by Bharat Biotech, which is Covaxin. And by August, Covaxin maker Bharat Biotech believes that they'll be able to produce about 10 crore vaccines a month. So by August, September, we expect about 20 crore doses to come into place. What does that mean? Now remember that there is a certain amount of commitment that India has to export these vaccines. So let's say 90% can be used in India. At that rate, we will be able to vaccinate 70% of the target group, which is 18 plus by January 2022. That is by the January of next year. And 100% of the target population by April 2022. That's one year from now. One year of facing such surges, lockdowns, restrictions, social distancing. But remember, India is actually the vaccine capital of the world. It makes about 60% of all vaccines. And we have an installed capacity to make about 68 crore vaccine doses of all kinds, not COVID vaccines, of all kinds every month. That's our installed capacity. Many experts say that a significant portion of these are essentially vaccines meant to tackle viruses. So you'll need to tweak the production process. And in 5 to 6 months, you can use about 50% of that installed capacity to produce vaccines inside India. That is, you add your total capacity to produce vaccines goes up to 34 crore instead of the 20 crore. But that will take till, let's say, September, October to happen if the government decides right now to do it today. Then we'll be able to produce about 34 crore vaccines by October. And what does that mean? That means that if that takes place, then by mid-November, 70% of the target population will get vaccinated. And by January 2022, when earlier we were saying that only 70% would be covered, by January 2022 at that production level, we will be able to cover 100% of the target population. Remember, 70% is a reasonable target to achieve. But that means that in another 5 to 6 months, if we can ramp up our production significantly, increase it dramatically, then we will be able to target that 70% population by November-December. But there's a problem here. The problem is that vaccines are just not the virus, right? It's just not the technology or the know-how how to make it out of lab. It also involves various kinds of raw materials, various kinds of filtration processes, reagents and stuff like that. Chemicals which come from many of which come from other countries. One of which is the United States. And the United States has put an embargo on the export of these products and which is affecting Indian vaccine makers as well. And in fact, global vaccine makers are being affected by that. Even if we now shift to producers like Germany and other EU countries, it will take time for us to actually work out deals, bring them in. Again, the government has to play the role here. If the US is not giving you enough reagents and enough raw materials, then the government has to come in on a war footing and work out deals with various other countries and even put pressure on the US to, diplomatic pressure on the US to release the raw materials for vaccines in India. In fact, just a few days ago, Adar Punawala, the CEO of Serum Institute of India, actually appealed to President of the United States, Joe Biden, that please lift this embargo, send the raw materials needed for us to produce these vaccines. But unless that happens, unless the US lifts the embargo, our dreams of producing, ramping up our vaccine production is going to remain just that, a dream. Now, one thing is having the doses in place. The other is to be able to administer them, right? You need people who are trained to give injections, vaccinations. You just can't, I mean, you can't ask me to go and start giving vaccinations. So, we'll have to look at trained people like doctors and nurses. And how many do we have? We have about 12 lakh doctors in India and 31 lakh registered nurses, which makes a total of 43 lakh such people. Now, let's say 10% of them, which is a difficult thing to do, are used to vaccinate people. And we say that, okay, on an average, keeping in mind that in some places the average would be very low, which is far-flung areas. In some places, it will be much higher. On an average, they manage to vaccinate 20 people per medical practitioner, which means every single day, we will be able to vaccinate 86 lakh people. With 10% of the 43 lakh medical practitioners that we have, which is 4.3, 10%, 4.3 nurses and doctors in the vaccination drive, they will then be able to vaccinate 86 lakh people. On an average, every day, they just vaccinate 20 people per head, right? 86 lakh people every day means close to 26 crore people being vaccinated in a month. 26 crore people getting vaccinated in a month. Now, is that possible? I just told you, our total production output is 8 crore a month. So, we'll need to ramp up 3 times to be able to give that. And we know that cannot happen even if 50% of India's vaccine producing capacity is used for COVID vaccine. It will not happen before October. So, the answer therefore was always going to be right from the beginning, allowing more international vaccines to come into India. And we've just allowed it. We've been sitting on our high horse complacently saying, Atma Nirbar Bharat, we're only going to take Covaxin and we're only going to look at Covishield and nothing else. We should have acted. The government should have acted much earlier, last year to allow many more vaccines to enter India. Some of them would have failed. Some of them would have been successful right now. We would have been using them. It's now belatedly opened up. The government is going to now allow many of these vaccines. There will be a trial period and then it will be allowed to be administered to a larger population. But again, as I said, India is the vaccine making capital of the world. 60% of vaccines are made in India. So, how much are you going to be able to import in any case? All this should have happened much, much earlier, at least 4-5 months earlier. Just when the graph was going down, we should have been on a war footing and tried to complete the entire vaccination process by April-May. Instead of now having to wait till April next year or at best January next year. So, that's what we're seeing right now. Again, as I said, we cannot really hope that we'll be able to import. Our best case scenario is actually to ramp up our production. Do it single-mindedly wherever the government needs to fund overseas. It has to be done like a war economy would do it. And that is the only way to do it. And hopefully, hopefully it will be done. It requires strong political and administrative will. But let's keep hoping. There's no point in just sitting here and being gloomy.