India yesterday introduced free COVID-19 vaccinations to all adults in an attempt to bolster its inoculation drive, as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi started a muted International Yoga Day by hailing the practice’s “protective” properties against the virus.
India’s vaccination drive has significantly slowed over the past few months due to a shortage of vaccines and people’s hesitancy to get inoculated, even as the country battled a vicious surge in cases in April and last month that overwhelmed the healthcare system in many places.
Case numbers have since fallen sharply and the authorities have again relaxed many restrictions, sparking fears of another wave.
The government had on May 1 expanded the vaccine rollout to include all adults aged 45 and younger, but states and private hospitals had to procure and buy the doses themselves for the younger age group, leading to confusion and shortages.
However, the Indian government later changed tack, announcing that it would procure 75 percent of the vaccine supply and distribute the doses to states so that they could inoculate people for free.
It has so far administered 275 million shots, with barely 4 percent of people fully vaccinated.
The government aims to inoculate all of India’s almost 1.1 billion adults by the end of the year.
“The vaccination drive is expected to pick up speed now... The daily vaccination has picked up over the last week and is expected to strengthen further,” community health expert Rajib Dasgupta told reporters. “However, both existing inequities as well as hesitancy merit deeper attention to make this a success.”
The free rollout came as Modi marked the annual Yoga Day event with an early morning address to the nation as Indians emerge from the surge, saying that the practice had again proved itself to be a source of “inner strength.”
“When I speak to frontline warriors, they tell me that they have adopted yoga as a protective shield in their fight against the coronavirus. Doctors have strengthened themselves with yoga and also used yoga to treat their patients,” Modi said.
Public parks in New Delhi were reopened yesterday, which was just in time, but the number of events for Yoga Day was cut back across the country for the second year running due to the virus.
Yoga Day — proposed by Modi and adopted by the UN in 2014 — is observed mostly in India, but also worldwide on the northern hemisphere’s longest day.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian government has touted yoga and herbal medicines — sales of which have boomed — to protect and give relief to people infected with the virus.
However, evidence is scant and the claims have faced pushback from India’s doctors, who last month wore black armbands to protest Baba Ramdev, a guru with ties to the Modi administration who has said that yoga can cure COVID-19.
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