I have not yet received my first jab. Billions of adults in India tried to register at the same time on May 1, only to find that the website could not handle so much traffic and was not working. I was one of them and couldn’t even open the website.
But that is not a surprise.
The vaccination centres 3 weeks ago could have been super spreaders of Covid. Many of my friends shared the same and were not planning to rush for vaccination.
But I also noticed that some of my friends got it, and I wondered: how did they get it?
Most of them were IT geeks and had these bot-scripts running that could automatically get them the vaccination slot.
When they got vaccinated, they talked about how they felt privileged and felt sorry for the poor people who don’t have strong access to the net.
We Indians are educated-hypocrites, no doubt about it.
But why did this happen in the first place?
These look like deliberate loopholes created in the system to take such undue benefits. Great living thinkers suggest vaccinating all adults within 3 months to save India from the third wave, but how, no one knows. Doctors, economists and social activists have given reasonable suggestions but it is up to the government to accept such suggestions and act fast.
The government may do its part to plan this, but some such actions that I think are good are as follows.
1) Register everyone
Let people register first and allocate slots to them through an algorithm instead of letting people fight a digital war.
Open kiosks for self-registration so people can register.
2) Set priorities
First inoculate people who file income taxes, earn less than 5 lacs annually, and are older than 30. Such people are those who may go to work and not have the flexibility to work from home.
Inoculate delivery people, local store owners, milk delivery people, local and interstate drivers.
Do not vaccinate people who have been recovering from Covid for three months. They would have developed enough antibodies to survive at least three months of non-Covid life. I read this somewhere and thought it reasonable enough.
Right now, don’t favour the people who work in IT companies and do WFH. Don’t stop completely, but give them an optimal window of opportunity.
3) Segregate to the lowest level.
Don’t allow people to get vaccinated in a region further than 15km from their home.
Segregate people to the lowest level, which is the region covered by the MLA. There would be fewer people to control and hence less trouble.
4) Team up with celebrity-activists.
Team up with celebrities like Sonu Sood. These people are far more efficient at getting results than any government agency.
5) Create awareness about vaccines in rural areas.
Some areas are still afraid of vaccines and still try to run away from vaccines.
6) Increase the production of vaccines.
This is something where the government has done something that involves accepting vaccines from Russia - Sputnik.
But the government should have explicit instructions and guidelines about the differences between all available vaccines. It would not be wise to say every vaccine is the same, that is not true. People should have the same confidence in every vaccine available.
If the government takes such measures, I am sure India will not have a wave-3 similar to the ongoing wave-2 and will come out of this pandemic phase peacefully.
Image courtesy: Alexandra Koch-Pixabay
