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Vaccine a weapon, not a failure in India's COVID-19 debacle: expert
By Gao Yun and Liu Wei
A notice on a gate indicates that there is no oxygen at the COVID-19 Care Center at the Commonwealth Games Village Sports Complex in New Delhi, India, April 25, 2021. /CFP

A notice on a gate indicates that there is no oxygen at the COVID-19 Care Center at the Commonwealth Games Village Sports Complex in New Delhi, India, April 25, 2021. /CFP

India's COVID-19 crisis doesn't mean the vaccine has failed to help people in the fight against the pandemic, a leading Chinese expert said on Weibo, China's Twitter equivalent, on Sunday.

Although India's vaccination total ranks third in the world after the U.S. and China, the country's large population means only eight percent of people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, said Zhang Wenhong, an infectious disease expert and head of the Shanghai COVID-19 medical team. 

Other countries' experience also suggests the vaccine is a vital weapon in the fight against the virus, Zhang said. For instance, Israel's population has reached a protection rate against COVID-19 of over 70 percent thanks to its high vaccination rate as well as natural infection. 

If India depends on natural infection to protect itself against the virus, millions of people will die before it reaches to herd immunity, Zhang warned. "It will take decades," he said.

"India loosened up social restrictions in March to hold several traditional festivals and its slow actions aggravated the domestic epidemic," he also noted. Now, only strict measures can help control the virus and prevent a bigger outbreak in the coming months.

Zhang pointed out that the B.1.617 strain, dubbed a "double mutant" variant and first detected in India last October, was responsible for the surge in local COVID-19 fatalities, but was not a major cause leading to an out-of-control situation.

The country has suffered record-high daily death tolls for several consecutive days. This trend corresponds to the increase in the proportion of the B.1.617 variant, said Zhang.

The variant accounts for a higher proportion in India than the B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variants – first detected in the UK and South Africa respectively. And the proportion has been increasing significantly since April, accounting for more than 70 percent of local cases, he said.

It is also surfacing in other countries: over 20 countries had detected the strain as of April 20, and several countries have now banned flights from India as a precaution.

Genomic data suggests that the B.1.617 and B.1.17 variants have similar transmissibility, which is higher than the B.1.351 variant, the expert said.

He added that the growing shortage of medical resources was to blame for the peaking death tally in the country.

"What India needs most at the moment is oxygen, which, more than any medicine, can reduce the death rate of young patients."

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