Covid-19: Mandaviya seeks NGOs' help on vaccination as R-value improves for most of India

With only 40% of India’s adult population being fully vaccinated, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Tuesday sought help from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to spread the door-to-door Covid-19 vaccination campaign.

In a meeting with the NGOs, Mandaviya appealed to the civil society outfits to take the vaccination campaign far and across the country inoculating the maximum number of people.

About 80% of India’s 94.47 crore adult population received a single dose so far whereas only 40% people are fully vaccinated. Earlier, the Centre announced vaccinating the entire adult population by December, 2021.

The minister suggested issuing stickers to houses whose adult members received both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine in order to encourage uptake of vaccine among the population.

“India stood tall in Covid-19 crisis because of the initiative of NGO’s and civil society organisations which supplemented the efforts of the government to ensure that nobody went to sleep on an empty stomach during the Covid lock down,” he stated.

The minister’s appeal comes at a time when the R (reproduction number) values for all the metros remain above the threshold value of one even though the situation has improved a bit for most of the states as well as for the country compared to the situation a week ago. This is in tune with a continuously shrinking epidemic.

India on Tuesday reported 8,865 new cases in the past 24 hours, which is the lowest in 287 days or over nine months.

Among the states with more than 1,000 active cases, only four states – West Bengal, Telangana, Mizoram and Jammu and Kashmir - have an R-value above one, suggesting an expanding epidemic, according to Sitabhra Sinha, a scientist at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai who is tracking the epidemic successfully with his model since last year.

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