Since the commencement of the Indian vaccination campaign that is aiming to immunize 300 million people against COVID-19 by the summer, vaccination intent has increased in the population.
While a survey published by YouGov in January showed that only a third of Indians wanted to get vaccinated as soon as possible, a new round of questions revealed that by the end of March, this had increased to 57 percent of urban Indians. The number of people who wanted to wait and see halved from 41 percent to 20 percent.
A locally produced version of the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and a local product, Covaxin, are used in the Indian vaccination drive. One reason holding Indians back might be the fact that Covaxin has not yet cleared stage III trials. The Indian government started using the vaccine nevertheless, similar to strategies employed by Russia for the Sputnik vaccine and China for the Sinovac and Sinopharm varieties. But with adverse effects appearing to stay inside the norm, more and more people are looking forward to finally be signing up for that vaccine appointment.
