Dear Rotary Leaders
Since the beginning of 2020, everyone everywhere has been asking one question, “When will the Covid pandemic end?” India has now seen its lowest case load in a single day after nearly 9 months. In addition, we have also recorded the highest recovery rate since March 2020. The festive season has not added cases and except one State there has been no surge elsewhere. Even in this State, hospitalization has not increased. Has Covid entered an endemic phase in India? Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist in WHO in a televised programme said that the virus hasn’t gone anywhere and it is still out thee looking for people to infect. The unvaccinated people, especially the elderly, are susceptible to Covid 19 and its variants and hence she strongly advises everyone to get the two doses immediately.
Today cases are going up in Western Europe because of relaxation in social measures and masks are not being used. The unvaccinated people are being hospitalized and those who are vaccinated are spared from severe Covid symptoms. This is what the vaccine are supposed to do.
News reports in the papers on November 18, 2021 say that there is a fall in number of those taking first dose. In fact, strangely the number of Indians who have got two doses of vaccine exceeds those who have got only one dose! We were euphoric when ‘more’ people got vaccinated and India administered over 113.68 crore of doses when this week began. Out of these 75 crores were administered as first dose 38 crore as second dose. This means that number of people who got the second dose is more than those who got their first dose. The number of people taking their first dose has fallen to 69 lakhs and the ‘Har Ghar Dastak’ (Knock on every door) campaign is lagging behind.
India has to administer close to 10 crore doses a week if we have to inoculate all adults (over 94 crores) by the year end. The Government has been able to achieve about 6 crores a week in September and now we have to step up our advocacy efforts to support the Government and prevent any new wave from taking over the country.
I appeal to all the District leaders , Zonal Co-ordinators and Rotary clubs to now double up their efforts and make sure that no eligible person is left out from getting the vaccines. I would like to emphasise that Rotary’s help was sought by the Government because we promised to deliver the results by this year end. There can be many reasons why clubs are not conducting vaccination camps now in their area. There cannot be reasons why we were not able to save lives. We have to do whatever it takes to remove vaccine hesitancy seen in people and make them realise that vaccine is only going to save them and not harm them.
More vaccination because of our advocacy and not less must be our goal in the coming days since we have to do this for our country. Make it happen.