In a report submitted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, health experts including those from the national taskforce for COVID management, have stated that mass, indiscriminate and incomplete vaccination can potentially trigger new, mutant strains of the COVID19 virus.

The Press Trust of India reported that experts from Indian Public Health Association (IPHA), Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSM) and Indian Association of Epidemiologists (IAE) have also stated that there is no need to vaccinate those who have been previously reported to have contracted coronavirus infection.

“Mass, indiscriminate, and incomplete vaccination can also trigger emergence of mutant strains. Given the rapid transmission of infection in various parts of the country, it is unlikely that mass vaccination of all adults will catch up with the pace of natural infection among our young population,” the report mentioned.

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Vaccinating the vulnerable and those at risk, instead of mass population-wide inoculation including children, should be the aim at present, the report noted.

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“The present situation of the pandemic in the country demands that we should be guided by the logistics and epidemiological data to prioritise vaccination rather than opening vaccination for all age groups at this stage,” it stated.

“Opening all fronts simultaneously will drain human and other resources and would be spreading it too thin to make an impact at the population level,” the experts added in the report.

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While it makes perfect sense to vaccinate all adults, the reality is that the country is in the midst of an ongoing pandemic with limited availability of vaccines, the report said.

It added that the ongoing research on vaccine effectiveness under field conditions by following cohorts of vaccinated and unvaccinated in different age strata should be prioritised.

Stating the current wave is largely attributable to multiple variants, the experts pointed out that India has so far done genome sequencing of less than one per cent of its positive COVID19 samples. It suggested that way more genome sequencing needs to be done in order to have a better understanding of the Sars-Cov-2 virus and its mutations.

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