Manmohan writes to PM on 5-point remedy; stresses vaccination key to battling pandemic

NEW DELHI: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggesting five measures to battle the COVID-19 crisis, including ramping up vaccination and boosting the supply of medicines.

In a letter to the prime minister, the veteran Congress leader said one must not look at absolute numbers but the total percentage of the population that has been vaccinated. Invoking compulsory licencing provisions for drug manufacturers and giving some flexibility to states to define categories of frontline workers who can be vaccinated even if they are below 45 years are some of the steps mooted by him.

“The key to our fight against COVID-19 must be ramping up the vaccination effort. We must resist the temptation to look at the absolute numbers being vaccinated, and focus instead on the percentage of the population vaccinated,” he said in his letter. Noting that India currently has vaccinated only a small fraction of its population, Singh said he is certain that with the right policy design, “we can do much better and very quickly,” he said while making several suggestions. He said some states may want to designate school teachers, bus, three-wheeler and taxi drivers, municipal and panchayat staff, and possibly lawyers who have to attend courts as frontline workers, and they can then be vaccinated even if they are below 45 years. Singh said the Centre should publicise vaccine dose orders placed and accepted for delivery over the next six months. “If we want to vaccinate a target number in this period, we should place enough orders in advance so that producers can adhere to an agreed schedule of supply,” he noted. “I believe this is the time to invoke the compulsory licencing provisions in the law so that a number of companies are able to produce the vaccines under a licence. This, I recall, had happened earlier in the case of medicines to deal with the HIV/ AIDS disease,” he said.

With domestic supplies being limited, Singh said any vaccine that has been cleared by credible authorities such as the European Medical Agency or the USFDA, should be allowed to be imported without domestic bridging trials. “We are facing an unprecedented emergency and, I understand, experts are of the view that this relaxation is justified,” he added.