Thread by @virajku

@ARanganathan72 Serum has a capacity of 60 million vaccines/month as per Adar Poonawalla’s interview (India Today – 6th Apr 21) below. This translates to 20 lakh per day. As per your website, COVAXIN is currently manufacturing 40 lakh/month, roughly 1 lakh a day. Net net, we are currently at 21

@ARanganathan72 lakh/day. Now, Serum can take up its capacity to 33 lakh per day by end of June and Covaxin to 2 lakh by May and 10 lakh by July. So, till the end of June, we are looking at a supply of 22 lakh vaccines/day from these 2 vaccines.

@ARanganathan72 If we vaccinate at more than this pace, we start dipping into accumulated stocks. 2.Serum had stated they had stockpiled 100mn doses by end of December. Assuming they produced 60 mn/month for Jan-June, it is another 360 mn doses. Covaxin would add another 30 mn doses.

@ARanganathan72 Adding all these up, we get to around 500mn doses by end of June. Assuming 80 mn have been exported and around 90 mn have been administered till date, that leaves us with around 330 mn doses for the next 90 odd days, till additional capacity from Serum comes online.

@ARanganathan72 If we do the math, we arrive at around 36 lakh doses a day is the supply that we know of today. In the first week of April, since the vaccination was opened up to 45+, we have averaged around 34 lakh/day as per COWIN data. So we are at peak capacity in terms of supply of vaccine

@ARanganathan72 So opening up to all age groups doesn’t make sense at the current moment. 3.Coming to the next issue of age group to vaccinate. As per health ministry data, 88% of all deaths are in the age group of 45+ with a CFR of 2.85%. This data was as of 24th March.

@ARanganathan72 As of that day, we had 11.79 mn cases with 160,726 cases. 88% of these were 45+, which comes to around 4.96 mn cases and 141,439 deaths with a CFR of 2.85%. Remaining cases and deaths are of <45 age group – 6.82 mn cases and 19,287 deaths which comes to a CFR of 0.28%.

@ARanganathan72 Net net, the probability of death for a person above 45 years (2.85%) is 10 times that of a person less than 45 years (0.28%) as per reported data. In reality, many of the people <45 would be asymptomatic, undetected; hence the CFR in that age group is probably lower.

@ARanganathan72 Now given this fact with the supply crunch in point 2, I see it is perfectly ok to vaccinate only people above 45 till supply of vaccines increases (Note I am 32 and desperately waiting for my turn. Though I ‘want’ it ASAP, I won’t take it from someone who ‘needs’ it more than me

@ARanganathan72 Looks like data for AZ is here. Very clear that it older the age group, more ICU admissions are prevented. Only logical that 45+ should be prioritised. In fact for 20-29 in the low risk setting, the risk looks to outweigh the reward 1.1 harm vs 0.8 ICU prevented!!!