New Delhi, February 24
India was able to save more than 3.4 million lives by undertaking a nationwide Covid-19 vaccination campaign at an unprecedented scale, a report by Stanford University said.
The Covid vaccination campaign also yielded a positive economic impact by preventing a loss of USD 18.3 billion, the working paper by Stanford University and Institute for Competitiveness titled ‘Healing the Economy: Estimating the Economic Impact on India’s Vaccination and Related Issues’ released by Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Friday said.
Mandaviya said much before Covid-19 was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) in January 2020, processes and structures to focus dedicatedly on various facets of the pandemic management were put in place.
He virtually addressed the ‘The India Dialog’ session on the Economic Impact of Vaccination and Related Matters.
“India under the leadership of honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji adopted a ‘Whole of Government’ and ‘Whole of Society’ approach in a proactive, preemptive and graded manner, thus adopting a holistic response strategy for effective management of Covid-19,” the minister said.
The dialogue was organised by Institute for Competitiveness and US-Asia Technology Management Center, Stanford University.
The paper also highlighted the impact of the lockdown and referred to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s statistical analysis that the Covid-19 tally could have reached about two lakh (0.2 million) without lockdown by April 11, 2020.
Due to lockdown measures, the actual cases only went up to about 7,500 by April 11, 2020, making a case for the lockdown stronger. The imposition of the lockdown also avoided two million deaths.
It further mentions that 100,000 lives were saved due to the lockdown (March-April), according to the Economic Survey (2020-21), and a Covid-19 tally of 200,000 if there was no lockdown and containment by April 11, 2020. “India was able to save more than 100,000 (0.1 million) lives through the lockdown in March-April 2020. Moreover, the country took around 175 days to reach the peak from its first 100 cases while most countries reached their first peak in less than 50 days (Russia, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, etc.),” the report said.
