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Braving a Viral Storm: India’s Covid-19 Vaccine Story
In July 2022, India crossed 200 crore vaccinations in the country. This was merely 547 days from the start of the vaccination drive. No one could have predicted this astounding success story.
In late 2019, a dreaded pathogen started spreading faster than any other virus in recent history. Every country had its unique challenges, but none more than India. The scale, complexity and diversity of the country, coupled with its deep global economic integration, meant India had to find counters to the pandemic by evolving its own financial, healthcare and social models.
And India did just that. With the decisive political leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ingenuity of Indian pharmaceutical firms and their scientists and a whole-of-government approach, India overcame everyone’s worst fears and potential disasters. India created its own vaccine intellectual property, used technology to distribute the doses and helped the world in the true spirit of vasudhaiva kutumbakam [The World Is One Family]. The result was the vast vaccine coverage in the country as well as the extensive aid provided to other nations.
In Braving a Viral Storm: India’s Covid-19 Vaccine Story, Aashish Chandorkar and Suraj Sudhir recall this saga of India’s fortitude and collective resolve. They use extensive data to follow the story, starting right from global perspectives on the unlikeliness of a pandemic, the development of the vaccine both in scientific and political terms and the series of triumphs over political, financial and geographical hurdles that followed. The book details how our self-belief played a key role in bouncing back from the pandemic and put the nation on the path of Aatmanirbharta, or self-dependence.
In late 2019, a dreaded pathogen started spreading faster than any other virus in recent history. Every country had its unique challenges, but none more than India. The scale, complexity and diversity of the country, coupled with its deep global economic integration, meant India had to find counters to the pandemic by evolving its own financial, healthcare and social models.
And India did just that. With the decisive political leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ingenuity of Indian pharmaceutical firms and their scientists and a whole-of-government approach, India overcame everyone’s worst fears and potential disasters. India created its own vaccine intellectual property, used technology to distribute the doses and helped the world in the true spirit of vasudhaiva kutumbakam [The World Is One Family]. The result was the vast vaccine coverage in the country as well as the extensive aid provided to other nations.
In Braving a Viral Storm: India’s Covid-19 Vaccine Story, Aashish Chandorkar and Suraj Sudhir recall this saga of India’s fortitude and collective resolve. They use extensive data to follow the story, starting right from global perspectives on the unlikeliness of a pandemic, the development of the vaccine both in scientific and political terms and the series of triumphs over political, financial and geographical hurdles that followed. The book details how our self-belief played a key role in bouncing back from the pandemic and put the nation on the path of Aatmanirbharta, or self-dependence.
- GenresNonfiction
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 5, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 15, 2023
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Soren Kierkegaard
As the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and slowly ravaged, the world in 2020 & 2021, and, now with the hindsight of the past 3 years, these words of Kierkegaard struck me. From a position of ignorance to fear and, from a sense of hope to relief, we have come a long way. And the credit for this goes no doubt to India’s almost miraculous vaccination drive. Dubbed as the #LargestVaccinationDrive, in retrospect, it seems simple and not so much of a big deal. The authors of this book tell us why this was not so.
Beginning from when India reported its first case on 30th Jan’ 20, to the entire vaccine R&D process (including the focus on Aatmanirbharta), EUAs being granted for 2 indigenous vaccines, to the vaccine rollout (including detailed logistics of the vaccine suppliers, cold storage chains, vaccinators, people behind the scenes, etc.), and the current vaccination status, the book really captures the journey India has traversed in the last 3 years. [Incidentally, 16th Jan’ 23 will be 2 years from the day the vaccine rollout started in the country].
The authors detail the entire process of how the Govt. machinery got into immediate action mode in Mar’20 itself, beginning with the creation of a task force, pushing for vaccines’ development nationally, monitoring the national & international happenings (including publishing daily data on the vaccine supplies & vaccinations done), etc.
The odds were stacked against India & the developing world in terms of financial & operational constraints for developing a vaccine. And yet, the ingenuity of Indian pharmaceutical firms & its scientists enabled it to manufacture not 1 but 2 vaccines which covered most of the population. They were aided by the CoWIN platform, which became the fastest tech platform globally to amass 20 crore registrations in less than 4 months. It routinely handled more than a billion visits daily at the peak of the vaccination process [I may have contributed to some of those visits myself ☺]
The book details how India’s fortitude, courage, conviction, collective efforts & foresight enabled it to tide over this crisis. Its people had an unflinching trust in the country’s leadership & scientists. Several challenges in the vaccination process, including scale, readiness to take vaccines, training the medical personnel, etc., were overcome through four Ps – process, people, platform & persuasion. What India demonstrated during the Covid-19 response is that it has a sophisticated public that understands the challenges of execution & also recognizes both basic & sophisticated solutions being delivered to solve long-pending problems.
This is not to say that the process proceeded without any criticisms. The vaccination rollout was questioned, lampooned, prejudged, subjected to a veiled ridicule, etc. But as Alexandre Dumas noted, “Nothing succeeds like success.”
The detailed discussion on Aatmanirbhar Bharat – how India stood its ground while fighting against pressure from international pharma firms, their domestic lobbyists & global amplifiers was an interesting read. So was the chapter on Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, especially Vaccine Maitri, in which India sent vaccines to several low & middle income developing friendly nations [by the time the Delta wave hit India in Apr’21, it had supplied vaccines to ~95 different countries & entities; by the end of Oct’22, India had exported ~27 crore vaccine doses to 100 countries]. India also fought for IPR issues at WTO & sought TRIPS waiver. The WTO developments ensured that India received a lot of goodwill from the developing world & from the Global South.
I got literal goosebumps reading Pg. Nos. 168-169: “Young India believes” – why the youth embraced vaccination so enthusiastically.
As of 15th Jan’ 23, India has crossed 220 crore vaccination doses; 2 years from the start of the vaccination drive. This would have seemed almost entirely unbelievable to someone at the start of the journey.
The book is quite an interesting and easy read, peppered with a lot of anecdotes, data (numbers + tables), and facts (including how other nations dealt with this) about the vaccination journey. It seeks to remind us of how difficult the path has been, especially for India, and how it has come out strongly in the fight against Covid-19, helmed by a strong leadership, ably supported by the innovative skills of our scientists & the humble backing of our various institutions including BIRAC, DBT, DCGI, ICMR, IISc, NIV, etc.
While reading the book, there were quite a few things which I learned for the first time, including:
Louis Pasteur’s work led to doctors beginning to use personal protective equipment (PPE).
India took longer than Somalia, Ethiopia, & all of sub-Saharan Africa to eradicate polio.
Most of the contributed smallpox vaccine was provided under bilateral agreements by the USSR, which donated more than 1,400 million doses from 1958 to 1979.
Indian states already had databases on individuals with co-morbidities, which were created through non-communicable disease screenings done by health & wellness centres.
Introduced in 2015, the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network, or eVIN, predated Covid-19 by several years. The CoWIN platform was extrapolated from this.
Mumbai airport has Asia’s biggest import cold chain capacity, with a storage capacity of more than 30,000 tonnes.
Some of the sentences in the book that I really loved:
India was up to the task of this global arranging of deckchairs.
The commentary was basically the tyranny of the op-ed space – the one with the access to the opinion can have a field day alleging practically anything.
When complex processes work exactly as planned, there is not much analysis of why things worked the way they were supposed to.
And, last but not the least, the last sentence in the Acknowledgements: Your faith is our booster dose of motivation.
This review first appeared on my blog: pallosworld.blogspot.com.
As the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and slowly ravaged, the world in 2020 & 2021, and, now with the hindsight of the past 3 years, these words of Kierkegaard struck me. From a position of ignorance to fear and, from a sense of hope to relief, we have come a long way. And the credit for this goes no doubt to India’s almost miraculous vaccination drive. Dubbed as the #LargestVaccinationDrive, in retrospect, it seems simple and not so much of a big deal. The authors of this book tell us why this was not so.
Beginning from when India reported its first case on 30th Jan’ 20, to the entire vaccine R&D process (including the focus on Aatmanirbharta), EUAs being granted for 2 indigenous vaccines, to the vaccine rollout (including detailed logistics of the vaccine suppliers, cold storage chains, vaccinators, people behind the scenes, etc.), and the current vaccination status, the book really captures the journey India has traversed in the last 3 years. [Incidentally, 16th Jan’ 23 will be 2 years from the day the vaccine rollout started in the country].
The authors detail the entire process of how the Govt. machinery got into immediate action mode in Mar’20 itself, beginning with the creation of a task force, pushing for vaccines’ development nationally, monitoring the national & international happenings (including publishing daily data on the vaccine supplies & vaccinations done), etc.
The odds were stacked against India & the developing world in terms of financial & operational constraints for developing a vaccine. And yet, the ingenuity of Indian pharmaceutical firms & its scientists enabled it to manufacture not 1 but 2 vaccines which covered most of the population. They were aided by the CoWIN platform, which became the fastest tech platform globally to amass 20 crore registrations in less than 4 months. It routinely handled more than a billion visits daily at the peak of the vaccination process [I may have contributed to some of those visits myself ☺]
The book details how India’s fortitude, courage, conviction, collective efforts & foresight enabled it to tide over this crisis. Its people had an unflinching trust in the country’s leadership & scientists. Several challenges in the vaccination process, including scale, readiness to take vaccines, training the medical personnel, etc., were overcome through four Ps – process, people, platform & persuasion. What India demonstrated during the Covid-19 response is that it has a sophisticated public that understands the challenges of execution & also recognizes both basic & sophisticated solutions being delivered to solve long-pending problems.
This is not to say that the process proceeded without any criticisms. The vaccination rollout was questioned, lampooned, prejudged, subjected to a veiled ridicule, etc. But as Alexandre Dumas noted, “Nothing succeeds like success.”
The detailed discussion on Aatmanirbhar Bharat – how India stood its ground while fighting against pressure from international pharma firms, their domestic lobbyists & global amplifiers was an interesting read. So was the chapter on Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, especially Vaccine Maitri, in which India sent vaccines to several low & middle income developing friendly nations [by the time the Delta wave hit India in Apr’21, it had supplied vaccines to ~95 different countries & entities; by the end of Oct’22, India had exported ~27 crore vaccine doses to 100 countries]. India also fought for IPR issues at WTO & sought TRIPS waiver. The WTO developments ensured that India received a lot of goodwill from the developing world & from the Global South.
I got literal goosebumps reading Pg. Nos. 168-169: “Young India believes” – why the youth embraced vaccination so enthusiastically.
As of 15th Jan’ 23, India has crossed 220 crore vaccination doses; 2 years from the start of the vaccination drive. This would have seemed almost entirely unbelievable to someone at the start of the journey.
The book is quite an interesting and easy read, peppered with a lot of anecdotes, data (numbers + tables), and facts (including how other nations dealt with this) about the vaccination journey. It seeks to remind us of how difficult the path has been, especially for India, and how it has come out strongly in the fight against Covid-19, helmed by a strong leadership, ably supported by the innovative skills of our scientists & the humble backing of our various institutions including BIRAC, DBT, DCGI, ICMR, IISc, NIV, etc.
While reading the book, there were quite a few things which I learned for the first time, including:
Louis Pasteur’s work led to doctors beginning to use personal protective equipment (PPE).
India took longer than Somalia, Ethiopia, & all of sub-Saharan Africa to eradicate polio.
Most of the contributed smallpox vaccine was provided under bilateral agreements by the USSR, which donated more than 1,400 million doses from 1958 to 1979.
Indian states already had databases on individuals with co-morbidities, which were created through non-communicable disease screenings done by health & wellness centres.
Introduced in 2015, the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network, or eVIN, predated Covid-19 by several years. The CoWIN platform was extrapolated from this.
Mumbai airport has Asia’s biggest import cold chain capacity, with a storage capacity of more than 30,000 tonnes.
Some of the sentences in the book that I really loved:
India was up to the task of this global arranging of deckchairs.
The commentary was basically the tyranny of the op-ed space – the one with the access to the opinion can have a field day alleging practically anything.
When complex processes work exactly as planned, there is not much analysis of why things worked the way they were supposed to.
And, last but not the least, the last sentence in the Acknowledgements: Your faith is our booster dose of motivation.
This review first appeared on my blog: pallosworld.blogspot.com.
January 9, 2023
I commend the authors for this well researched and wonderfully narrated book. Given the success of India's vaccination and with the receding of the pandemic, one might forget the challenges India had to overcome, but this book succinctly covers the Indian Vaccine Story.
India with its huge population and relatively lower per capita income of $2000 was written off by many including influential academics, western media persons and others. It was predicted that India will take years if not a decade to vaccinate its population of billion+ and that it would be fraught with chaos. The challenges were staggering.
But India not only succeeded in delivering 2 billion+ vaccines in a short time frame of an year (12-18 months) in an orderly manner but also with indigenous solutions. India was also able to help the global south with 200+ million doses exported, greater than populations of all but 7 countries in the world is truly a remarkable achievement. One that needs to be celebrated.
The book does a wonderful job of narrating the journey in achieving this.
India with its huge population and relatively lower per capita income of $2000 was written off by many including influential academics, western media persons and others. It was predicted that India will take years if not a decade to vaccinate its population of billion+ and that it would be fraught with chaos. The challenges were staggering.
But India not only succeeded in delivering 2 billion+ vaccines in a short time frame of an year (12-18 months) in an orderly manner but also with indigenous solutions. India was also able to help the global south with 200+ million doses exported, greater than populations of all but 7 countries in the world is truly a remarkable achievement. One that needs to be celebrated.
The book does a wonderful job of narrating the journey in achieving this.
January 17, 2023
If you have followed News and Twitter during the COVID-19 years (2020 and 2021), then this book will not only give you memories of that time but add in a new perspective to your memories, but also add unique anecdotes and insights the authors have through (1) The access they have to the Decision Makers in Government and Industry (through Aashish) and (2) The data analysis they have done (through Suraj)
Makes you appreciate the role of the Union Government during the pandemic and how the "experts" were proven to be charlatans.
Makes you appreciate the role of the Union Government during the pandemic and how the "experts" were proven to be charlatans.
January 18, 2023
While it is obviously very pro-government, it gives an excellent insight into the public policy manoeuvering behind the noise that the media made. It was fascinating to learn about many of the hurdles that were not apparent while the events were unfolding.
September 15, 2024
The author does a commendable job covering the backstage story of what transpired during "the pandemic." The story of India's resilience and how it fought against the unjust conditions put forth by the multinational pharma firms is also documented. The author also captures how the cogs of bureaucracy that are usually famous for their delays and action moved together seamlessly in this period to ensure that India is self sufficient in innoculation and protecting its citizens against the virus in light of the vaccine nationalism wave. It was interesting to understand how India, which is considered a low income developing country, went on to vaccinate 2bn+ doses to its citizens in a short time using digital platforms. The impact of media/social media and the so-called well wishers in spreading certain agendas is also mentioned in the book. My only reservation is that the author is working in for the present government in an international capacity at WTO, so certain biases are evident in some sections. Given the impact of Covid and how certain facts were obfuscated by governments world wide, I would have preferred a more balanced analysis on the issue.
September 5, 2023
Books like this need to be written more often especially by Indians. Indians need to set their narrative in this competitive world. Braving a viral storm is an encouraging story of tackling the pandemic in India and the efforts of all who have worked tirelessly to keep us safe. The COVID-19 pandemic caused enormous suffering across the globe. It's an account of the gripping struggle behind the creation of India's path- breaking Indian vaccines . India also went through its share of despair and agony. As a nation, we fought this pandemic bravely with the all-round support of the government, various science agencies and the public and came up with customized solutions to save the nation. The biggest among them was the development of an indigenous vaccine in record time. It is an honest attempt to take readers through the journey of India's homegrown vaccines.
February 8, 2023
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July 31, 2023
Magnificent work. Truly depicts the bravery shown by India in overcoming the cruel pandemic and everything is explained in detailed with the best quotations and facts
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews