Highlights Of #VaccinateIndia Telethon: An Initiative To Encourage Vaccination Against COVID-19

COVID-19 affects diabetic patients more which is why those people need to be more careful. If you have diabetes and you get COVID then there is a high chance of you needing ICU. Remember, all diabetes are not same. If you are young and have short diabetes and no other issue then COVID won't affect you much. The more comorbidities you have, the more severe will be the outcome. We have to take similar precautions - masking and physical distancing. Along with this, control your diabetes. Stay in touch with your doctor. If your blood sugar will be in control then there are less chances of you getting severe COVID-19.

It's pretty clear that COVID-19 actually affects patients with liver disease much more than patients who do not have it. There are the same receptors in the liver as there are in lungs. If a person is normal with normal liver function then they will not be affected. The liver test might go up a bit. Nothing much will happen to them. If they already have liver disease, it can become severe. If they have severe disease, there is a 15-20% chance of dying. Patients who are waiting for a transplant, it is safer to go for it. A person with liver disease must get the vaccine because they are at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19. 

Steroids are necessary for a subset of people- patients who are on oxygen and ventilator. It is true for any medicine that it has to be given at the right time to the right patient. In COVID-19 initially there is a virus in the body and inflammatory response that the body puts up as a result.

If there is too much information without context, medicine has to be learned over a period of time. If that is not done then there is infodemic. Secondly, it has exposed our own doctors and communities' ability to analyse the data. In medicines, it has to have a context when we talk about medication.

There is a huge role that corporate can play in special times like these. We have been doing work in other pandemics and epidemics in the past ranging from SARS, MERS, EBOLA. We reached out to 20 million kids across India through Dettol-NDTV collaboration. We have alternative channels to reach out the places. There needs to be behaviour change messaging in the community. We have been doing last mile work. We reached out to 50 per cent of the aspirational districts in India. We plan to cover more of the aspirational districts. 

The protocol from the Government of India asked us to identify and mark vaccination centres. How a vaccine goes from central storage to sub-godowns. We have 20,000 villages. The staff was trained, people for registation, administering vaccines were trained. In this process, over 7,000 people were trained for giving vaccine. We have given 3.26 lakh vaccines in a day. We can administer 3-3.5 lakh vaccines every day.