Continue pressure on govt to treble vaccination rate, Sonia tells cadre
NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday asked the party to continue the pressure on the government to treble the daily rate of vaccination to ensure at least 75% of India’s population is inoculated at the end of 2021.
She emphasised the party must play an active role in ensuring full vaccination coverage and encourage people to overcome vaccine hesitancy and register for jabs. “It is absolutely essential that our party plays an active role in ensuring full vaccination coverage. At the national level, the daily rate of vaccination has to treble so that 75% of our population gets fully vaccinated by end of this year,” she said in her opening remarks at a meeting with party’s general secretaries and state chiefs.
“No doubt, this is dependent entirely on the adequacy of vaccine supply. We must continue to put pressure on the Union government which has, at our Party’s insistence, finally taken on the responsibility for this. At the same time, we have to ensure that registration takes place, that vaccine hesitancy wherever evident is overcome and vaccine wastage is minimised,” Gandhi said.
Nearly 6.4 million doses of vaccines were administered against Covid-19 across the country till 11 pm on Wednesday, as per the Co-WIN dashboard – making it the day with the second-highest daily inoculation figures since the start of the drive. India’s latest round of vaccinations began on Monday with a record 8.5 million doses administered, but the numbers saw a slight drop on Tuesday when there were around 5.4 million daily jabs with numbers fluctuating heavily across states.
Gandhi asked the party leaders to give “urgent attention” and take “provocative measures” in the context of a possible third Covid-19 wave. “We have to take steps to be better prepared if and when this strikes. The second wave these past four months has been devastating for lakhs and lakhs of individual families all over the country. We must learn from this traumatic experience so that we do not have to experience it yet again,” she said.