Most of the world is struggling to secure enough vaccines to inoculate their populations. India has the opposite problem: Plenty of shots, but a shortage of people willing to take them.
As India rolls out one of the world’s biggest inoculation programs, some health-care and other frontline workers are hesitating because of safety concerns over a vaccine that has yet to complete phase III trials. As of Monday, only about 56% of people eligible to get the shot have stepped forward in a nation with the world’s second-worst Covid-19 outbreak.
Unless the inoculation rate significantly increases, India will fall far short of its target of inoculating 300 million people — or about a quarter of the population — by July. That will setback global efforts to contain the virus and snuff out optimism that a recovery is taking root in an economy set for its biggest annual contraction in records going back to 1952.
“At least 40% of doctors here are unsure and want to wait,” said Vinod Kumar, a resident doctor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences of Patna, in the eastern state of Bihar. “Carrying out a vaccine trial on us when India is short of doctors, health-care workers doesn’t make sense.”
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