“Imagination is more important than Knowledge” Said Albert Einstein. This holds true more than ever now. “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Again by Albert Einstein.
How do you quickly vaccinate all the adult population (children also) to prevent future covid waves.
The United States , regarded as world leader tacitly, implicitly or explicitly by other countries, once again showed the way to others. Ofcourse being a world leader and big brother carries a philanthropic annotation, at least in an enlightened self-interest way, which its fulfilling through Gavi.
It announced Operation Warp speed – an umbrella initiative to fight covid-19 through funding vaccine research($10Billion) among various other things on May 15 2020. It focused on Vaccine research and development, distribution process, last mile delivery. It’s stated mission was “To deliver 300 million doses of safe and effective by 1st January 2021 ”
OWS, as the name itself indicates, pushed for accelerated vaccine process. Things that could be done parallely were done assuming risk wherever required. For ex, while the phase-3 clinical trial underwent, the Govt funded the large-scale manufacturing process of most promising vaccine candidates. It stockpiled enough vaccine doses and was ready the moment FDA gave its Emergency Use Authorisation. It also planned for infrastructure and distribution before the vaccines are approved. Now that’s Typical “serious risk taking decision making attitude” displayed by the US. We have seen it umpteen times – US Govt decision to raid Osama Bin Laden’s hideout, US Govt decision to rescue its hostages from Iran.
All this was possible because of the Public-Private Partnership engineered by the US to fight the pandemic. Also money was never a problem for the US Govt.
And by December 14, the first vaccine was administered in the US. Operation Warp Speed, Light Speed, God Speed!
What India could do or couldn’t do?
We have the Private agencies with Biggest vaccine manufacturing capacity in the word(SII) and even R&D capacity (Bharat Biotech). We had money too! But we didn’t take the risk of placing the orders before Phase-3 clinical trials proved successful and vaccines were approved, forget funding the research and manufacturing. Even after the vaccines are given Emergency approval, we were hesitant to place sufficient orders.
We had applications of Foreign Vaccine makers lying with the Govt. We somehow didn’t process it! The vaccine makers quietly withdrew their applications.
Everything done and said, OWS was arguably Trump’s administration big success.
KEERTHI KIRAN PUJAR 