Workers in protective gear wait to receive medicines after they collect prescriptions from customers who are kept outside the medicine shop as a precautionary measure against the spread of the coronaviruses COVID - 19 in Kolkata, India, April 17, 2020. Nov 23 Reuters -- Demand for flu vaccines in India has surged after a second wave of COVID 19 brought the nation's healthcare system to its knees earlier this year.
Vaccines against influenza are not very common in India due to a lack of awareness, access and steep prices, and they are not part of the federal government's universal immunization program that includes polio, tuberculosis and Hepatitis B.
More than 1,000 shots were administered between July and September at Manipal Hospital in the tech hub of Bengaluru in southern India, compared to about 3,000 for the last year, according to the healthcare provider.
Initially, everyone thought that if you got flu vaccines, COVID 19 won't affect you seriously, said Dr. Ram Shankar Mishra, director of internal medicine at Max Super Specialty Hospital, Saket, in the national capital of New Delhi.
Mishra said demand has increased even as COVID-19 vaccines gather pace.
Apollo Hospitals APLH.NS and Fortis Healthcare FOHE.NS are seeing higher demand for flu shots, including Abbott India's ABOT.NS imported vaccine, Influvac, according to private hospital operators.
In the financial year ended March, sales in the vaccine unit increased 42.3% due to the influenza vaccine, according to Abbott India in its annual report.
Deepak Kapoor, 40, said he got both his children, aged 10 years and aged 8 months, a flu vaccine.
During the second wave, there was a lot of talk about flu vaccines. Our pediatrician recommended this and I read a lot of literature about it online. Pediatricians said that some worried parents also asked if their elderly relatives needed to be given the flu vaccine.
The price of these shots ranges between 1,500 and 2,000 Indian rupees $20 -- $27, making them inaccessible to a large part of India's population. In 2020, the country's per capita income was $1,900, according to World Bank data.
The surge in demand has triggered hopes that demand would stay strong.
In these two years, a lot of people are aware of the influenza vaccine, and I will be happy to see if the market grows, and I think it should, said Dr Lalit Kant, former head of epidemiology and communicable diseases division at the Indian Council of Medical Research.