Vaccine hesitancy
The second wave of covid-19 was a dreaded one. States across India witnessed harrowing experiences as young and the old struggled hard to keep the virus spread at bay and fight the infection.
Though the situation has improved quite considerably, the covid-19 worries are far from over. We still have a third wave knocking on our doors and the preparations this time around may help us to fight the threat in a more subtle way.
However, given the situation that is arising and the opinion of the experts that covid is here to stay, a viable strategy needs to be framed so that people can go out to work and still manage to escape the virus. All this can be possible when most of the people in the community are vaccinated and especially those who have to move out of their homes to seek work or attend offices.
In such a situation a massive vaccination drive needs to be started to challenge the situation arising out of sharp rise in the number of COVID cases. In Jammu and Kashmir the admin has managed to get the vaccination drive achieve maximum results as many innovative ways were started to reach to the maximum number of people and vaccinate them.
In many cases people were vaccinated at their workplaces as well, as the move was at times criticized at various levels also. But still the objective that was set managed to curtail the growing criticism.
The governments need to ensure a multi-sectoral response in addition to swift vaccination drives to cover maximum population of the target age groups to prevent subsequent waves of infection especially in the wake of emergence of mutant strains of the virus.
At this juncture we have also witnessed some sort of hesitancy to take the vaccine among a huge chunk of population in Jammu and Kashmir. This sort of negative development should be taken care of immediately as a massive drive to aware the people about the benefits of vaccine and how vaccination alone can hold the key to defeat the virus, needs to be taken up.
Today a religious body took a bold step in Srinagar after they came out with figures mentioning that around 50% population is yet to be vaccinated in the capital region which they called as a reason for concern.
We have already witnessed the fragility of our healthcare system. If the vaccine hesitancy tends to increase we may witness a scenario where the virus can make inroads among the community once again and ruin the good work that has been achieved after damaging the economy and livelihoods of people.
We in Jammu and Kashmir have witnessed more than four thousand deaths by covid-19 and lakhs have been infected. However, given our limited resources we have so far managed to avoid serious damage to the health and overall well being of the people here.
Though some complacency did figure during the past several months at some places and that is the reason that the cases started to grow once again, but we cannot ignore the virus threat especially when talks about the third wave seem to turn into a reality.
KV Network
