Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 23: The government has finally announced a long-awaited decision about vaccinating the differently-abled and the people with restricted mobility or totally bed-ridden. The government on Thursday announced that all such people would be given the vaccines at home.
The government had earlier expressed its inability to make arrangements for vaccinating people who were unable to reach the vaccination centres for health reasons. Even the courts had appreciated the government’s logistical problems in identifying such genuine problems and sending vaccines to homes, particularly because of the minimum temperature required to be maintained for preservation and during transportation of the vaccine doses.
The health ministry officials told a press conference here on Thursday that arrangements would be made to deliver vaccines to such differently-abled and people with mobility restrictions but did not give details about the time line for launching the new service.
The officials cautioned people against dropping guards against the pandemic and said the country was still in the midst of the second wave of the pandemic even though the number of daily new cases was declining. India on Wednesday logged 31,923 new infections out of which Kerala alone reported 19,675. There are about 3.01 lakh active cases in the country and Kerala has over 1.61 lakh active infections. Also, as many as 282 deaths in the last 24 hours took the total number of fatalities in the country to 4.46 lakh.
The officials pointed out that 62.73% of total infections reported last week were from Kerala alone, which is the only state with over 1 lakh active Covid cases. Thirty-three districts in the country were now reporting over 10 percent weekly positivity rate, while 23 are recording between 5-10 per cent, the officials said. Under Covid guidelines for the upcoming festival season, mass gatherings has to be avoided in containment zones and in districts with over five percent positivity rate, they said.
On the vaccination drive, they said as much as 66 percent of the country’s adult population has been given at least one jab and 23 percent are fully vaccinated. The Centre further informed that 18 crore doses of Covid vaccines have been administered in the first 22 days of September so far. On the other hand, 18 crore people were jabbed in 30 odd days in August.
Informing about the vaccination status of the states and Union Territories, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said six states/UTs have vaccinated 100 per cent of their adult population with the first dose.
Four states/UTs have administered the first dose of a Covid vaccine to 90 per cent of their adult population, he added.
“Six states/UTs have covered 100% of the first doses to their population. These are Lakshadweep, Chandigarh, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Sikkim,” Rajesh Bhushan said.
“Four states/UTs have more than 90% coverage of first dose – these are Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Kerala, Ladakh and Uttarakhand,” the health secretary added.
Speaking about health care workers, the central government informed that 99 per cent of them have been inoculated with one dose, while 84 per cent have been vaccinated completely against Covid-19.
On the international front, even as the impasse over the UK government refusing to recognize the vaccine certificates issued by India and making 10-day quarantine compulsory for all travellers from India even if they have taken both the doses of vaccine, the British High Commissioner Alex Ellis on Thursday said India and the UK held “excellent” technical discussion on the issue of vaccine certification.
Referring to new British travel rules, Ellis had on Wednesday said there was no problem with Covishield vaccine and that the main issue was COVID-19 vaccine certification done through the CoWIN app.
“Excellent technical discussions with @rssharma3 @AyushmanNHA. Neither side raised technical concerns with each other’s certification process. An important step forward in our joint aim to facilitate travel and fully protect public health of UK and India,” he tweeted on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the prime minister Narendra Modi currently on a visit to the US, told a Global Covid-19 Summit, “India is now running the world’s largest vaccination campaign. Recently, we vaccinated about 25 million people on a single day. Our grassroots-level healthcare system has delivered over 800 million vaccine doses so far. Over 200 million Indians are now fully vaccinated.
“This has been enabled through the use of our innovative digital platform called CoWIN. In the spirit of sharing, India has made CoWIN & many other digital solutions available freely as open-source software.”
He added, “Earlier this year, we shared our vaccine production with 95 other countries & with UN peacekeepers. Like a family, the world also stood with India when we were going through a second wave. For the solidarity & support extended to India, I thank you all… The pandemic has been an unprecedented disruption and it is not yet over. Much of the world is still to be vaccinated. That is why this initiative by the US President Joe Biden is timely and welcome.”
Modi said there was need to address the economic effects of the pandemic on various countries. “We also need to focus on addressing the pandemic’s economic effects. To that end, international travel should be made easier, through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates,” Modi said.
He added, “As newer Indian vaccines get developed, we’re also ramping up production capacity of existing vaccines. As our production increases, we’ll be able to resume vaccine supplies to others too. For this the supply chains of raw materials must be kept open. With our Quad partners, we’re leveraging India’s manufacturing strength to produce vaccines for Indo-Pacific region. India & South Africa have proposed a TRIPS waiver at WTO for COVID vaccines diagnostic & medicines. It’ll enable rapid scaling of the fight against pandemic.”