Bill Gates has the same concerns – and similar views

 

 

Here is what Bill Gates has to say about who should get COVID vaccine first – second – and so on .

Who should get what priority ?

As we get a vaccine approved in the next 4 months, India can play a big role: Bill Gates
Bodhisatva Ganguli , Sept 24 , Economic Times

 

Extract from interview with Bill Gates :

Who should be vaccinated first? How does a country decide that?

A vaccine has two properties. One is that it prevents you from getting sick, and there you’d want to go for elderly people.

The other thing a vaccine does is it reduces transmission, and there, you want to go for the health workers, people in nursing homes, police, teachers in schools...

So, each country is going to have an interesting challenge. (Infosys co-founder) Nandan Nilekani has talked about using the digital infrastructure for people to register that they want the vaccine and fill out some facts, and then hear, okay, who’s a provider nearby and what’s your priority ranking when there’s still those constraints

My big focus has been to make sure the volumes are very high, so these very difficult trade-offs about who should get it become a bit easier, because you just have so much volume that it’s not in super scarce supply.

It will be interesting for India, whether it allows some percentage of the vaccines made in India to go to other developing countries which don’t have these amazing vaccine manufacturers, like India does

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In my following blog / email , I wrote :

Rationing of Covid Vaccine ?   ……………………………………………………….[ 06 July 2020 ]

 

Who are those “most in need“?

 

 

Ø  People deserving highest priorities are :

 

      Ø  Healthcare Workers ( Doctors – Nurses – Lab Technicians etc )

 

      Ø  Police personnel

 

      Ø  Personnel from Essential Services

 

      Ø  Home Delivery persons…… (  This is not a comprehensive list )

 

How to determine these priorities , scientifically / un-biasedly , for 700 million people ?

 

But , if meticulously compiled and centrally processed ( with help of Artificial Intelligence ), following data, compiled uniformly at source, could determine those

 

 “ VACCINATION  PRIORITIES “ :

 

 

 

[ A ]   PERSONAL  DATA

 

          Ø  Name / Birthdate ( for Age ) / Gendre / Contact Details / Aadhar

              number

 

 

[ B ]   LOCATION  DATA

 

         Ø  Permanent Address / Current Address ( State – Jilla – City – locality ) /

             Red Zone / Containment

 

 

[ C ]   FAMILY  DATA

 

         Ø  Details of Parents / Siblings

 

 

[ D ]  HEALTH  HISTORY

 

         Ø  Details of recent illnesses - morbidity / Medicines given ( including for

             Covid treatment ) / Hospitals where treated / Names & License

             Number of Doctor who treated

             

 

[ E ]   ETHNIC  DATA

 

         Ø  Race / Religion  / Language ( Mother tongue )

 

 

[ F ]  EDUCATIONAL  DATA

 

        Ø  Graduate – Under Graduate – Illiterate etc

 

 

[ G ]  EMPLOYMENT  DATA

 

         Ø  Employed – Unemployed – Self employed

 

[ H ]  INCOME  DATA

 

         Ø  Monthly Income ( to determine whether RICH – MIDDLE CLASS –

             POOR )

 

 

As far as India’s moral obligation to supply the vaccine to other poor counties , here is what I proposed :

      A Nightmare come true ?   ……………………………………..[ 18 Sept 2020 ]

      Extract :

India is claimed to be manufacturing 60 % of the total vaccine production of the entire world ( with allegedly , SERUM INSTITUTE – Pune supplying 50 % of world supply )

That imposes on India, a MORAL RESPONSIBILITY to help out poor / covid affected countries, who do not have their own manufacturing facilities, nor the money to import expensive vaccines made by US-EU etc

At the “ World level “, we cannot dictate other countries what distribution regulation they should adopt

But, nothing stops Central Government from announcing the following RULES for the Indian Vaccine Manufacturers :

Ø    You will email ( to DCGI – Drug Controller General of India / ICMR and the

      Commerce Ministry ), your weekly / monthly, production / sales figures (

      including any vaccines imported in bulk for re-packaging or as vials )

     

    

Ø    You can locally sell vaccine, only to the Central and State Governments (-

      their notified agencies ) under BULK PURCHASE CONTRACTS

      

Ø    In any given month, you will be allowed to EXPORT, 20 % of the dozes that

      you have actually “delivered  “to local governments during the preceding

      month. For such exports, you will need to apply – and obtain  from the

      Commerce Ministry – an EXPORT LICENCE 

           

    ( If you have delivered 10 lakh dozes locally in Nov  2020 , you will be issued

      an export license for exporting 2 lakh dozes in Dec 2020 )

     

Ø   To get an Export License, you will need mention the DESTINATION (

     countries to which exporting ).

     Commerce Ministry will want to ascertain that you are going to export to “

     COVID affected POOR countries “ – and not to RICH countries

     

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With regards,

Hemen Parekh  /  hcp@RecruitGuru.com  /  26 Sept 2020