The only sensible response is to get as many hands on the deck as possible. Thankfully, this is what the Centre is trying, after having kept the private sector out all this while. Now for a ‘Get the jab’ advertising campaign

In a welcome move, the government announced on Wednesday a plan for the second phase of its vaccination drive against covid, set to start on 1 March. All those aged above 60 years, as also those above 45, but with existing illnesses that qualify as covid co-morbidities, will be immunized in this phase. Laudably, 20,000 private medical centres have also been allowed to administer vaccines for a fee.

This was much needed. Our pace of immunization has been rather tardy so far. We must speed it up for a sufficient proportion of our population to get jabs over the next few months, so that a second wave of infections gets no chance to thwart a national recovery. If state facilities alone were to do this job, the task would have taken inordinately long. A recent spurt in covid cases in at least five states had lent even greater urgency to our need for acceleration, as also the detection of virus variants suspected to be especially evasive or virulent. In short, we have no space for complacency. The only sensible response is to get as many hands on the deck as possible. Thankfully, this is what the Centre is trying, after having kept the private sector out all this while. Now for a ‘Get the jab’ advertising campaign.

All hands on deck