New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a review meeting with district magistrates of over 40 districts having low COVID-19 vaccination coverage, on November 3.
The statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said that immediately after returning to the country after attending the G20 Summit and COP26, the PM will interact with district magistrates of districts with less than 50 per cent coverage of the first dose and low coverage of the second dose of COVID-19 vaccine, on November 3 at 12 noon via video conferencing.
These districts are spread across Jharkhand, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya among other States. Chief Ministers of these States will also attend the meeting.
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On October 22, the Union Health Ministry had reported to the PMO that major states like Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Puducherry, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Manipur have utilised less than 70 per cent Covid-19 vaccination in comparison to other states consuming 90 per cent vaccination.
According to a survey conducted by the online community platform LocalCircles, only 7 per cent Indian adults are currently hesitant to getting inoculated against COVID-19, the lowest vaccine hesitancy level in the country so far. The study received 12,810 responses from citizens -- 67 per cent men and 33 per cent women -- across 301 districts. As much as 42 per cent respondents were from tier 1, 27 per cent from tier-2 and 31 per cent from tier 3, 4 and rural districts.
The study sought to understand from unvaccinated citizens their reasons for not taking the jab and their plan on getting inoculated. The responses suggest that overall 46 per cent of the unvaccinated citizens plan to take their first dose soon, news agency PTI quoted Sachin Taparia, the founder of LocalCircles, as saying.
"There were, however, 27% of citizens who do not plan to take the vaccine yet as they are not convinced whether the currently available ones provide enough protection from the current and future variants of coronavirus. These 27% are what can be classified as hesitant population," he said. Some respondents with a medical condition also cited concerns of potential blood-clotting. Some also cited COVID going away as the reason for them to not get vaccinated, the survey found.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Sunday said that with the administration of 68,04,806 vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India's COVID-19 vaccination coverage exceeded 106.14 crore.
