Despite repeated appeals from the country’s medical fraternity which includes top experts working on Covid at present, the Union Health Ministry has asserted that it’s more appropriate to stick to the restrictive mode of Covid vaccination and it seems that the ‘for all’ demand has been shelved for an indefinite period of time. A lengthy ‘medical explanation’ has accompanied the assertion and it will perhaps not be a long wait to feel the ‘consequences’ of the decision. However, with each passing day it’s getting more and more clear that the vaccination needs to be expanded without any further wastage of time, thereby putting into question  once more the relevancy of age-slab methodology.
While placing its arguments, the Health Ministry has said that the ongoing vaccination rollout is strictly in line with the country’s public health requirements, global practices and WHO guidelines. Examples of countries such as the UK and the US, Australia, France and Sweden who have adopted similar policies of vaccination prioritizing their population groups have been cited as justification. This is an effort to convince all who are crying for removing the age restriction, with a strange underlying theory that if the advanced countries haven’t opened the inoculation process for all, why should we. Again, the claim that India is the only country in the world to open the vaccination gate for all above 45 is also unconvincing. For instance, in the US where there are state-wise variations in vaccination norms, many states at present have opened it for all above 16 and so is the case of Israel. It also needs to be taken into account that even with a late start the said countries will not be facing much difficulty in vaccinating the majority of their population within the end of 2021 itself since in terms of population sizes, they are much less than India. It’s not without reasons that IMA, the country’s biggest and widely respected body of medical practitioners on Monday has urged the Centre to permit all citizens above 18 to receive shots arguing that it’s the one and only measure left at hand to counter the upward surge. And there’s nothing more to elaborate on the surge as it’s too fearful even to anticipate the coming weeks- during the last 24 hours there’s an addition of over 1.15 lakh new Covid cases, the first to happen so since the beginning of the pandemic.
The Health Ministry itself has said that next four weeks are going to be “very, very critical.” Indeed it will be so and perhaps to a greater measure if these decisions that hardly give space to the pressing on-ground realities continue to flow. 

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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