New Delhi, Nov 3 (FN Agency) Rumours circulating about vaccination and misformation are the biggest challenges that India is facing in its bid to get hundred per cent vaccination, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday told the nation as he asked district officials to rope in religious leaders to make people more aware and get the double dose against Covid-19. Modi virtually met 45 district magistrates under whose jurisdiction lowest penetration of the vaccination has become a cause of concern, even though India achieved 100 crore vaccination-mark on October 21. At the review meeting with the officials from Jharkhand, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, and other states, Modi said: “Biggest challenge against Covid is rumour and confusion among people.You can take more help from local religious leaders. “Religious leaders are very enthusiastic about the vaccination campaign,” said Modi while recalling his recent meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican. “One special thing in the country’s fight against Coronavirus has been that we found new solutions and tried innovative methods.
“Even the better performing districts had similar challenges but they were met with determination and innovation,” said the PM as he asked the administrators to compete with each other to meet the targets. He asked them to develop micro strategies, keeping in mind the experience so far to go for saturation of vaccination by addressing the gaps at local level and suggested to form a a team of 20-25 people depending on the region. He also suggested trying to have a healthy competition among the teams. “Now we are preparing to take the vaccination campaign to each household. With the mantra of ‘Har Ghar Dastak’, knock on every door, every household lacking the security net of a double dose of vaccine will be approached,” said PM.
Cautioning that while knocking on every house, equal attention needed to be paid to the second dose as well as the first dose, Modi said,“You will have to contact those people who have not taken the second dose despite the stipulated time on a priority basis…ignoring this has created problems for many countries in the world”. He further said that under the ‘free vaccine for all’ campaign, India created a record of administering about 2.5 crore vaccine doses in a day and added that this feat bears testimony to the country’s capabilities. Earlier, the Union Health Secretary gave an account of balance vaccine doses availability in the states, and also talked about special vaccination campaigns being run to further improve vaccination coverage.