Mumbai: Many Indians are appearing a bit hesitant to get vaccinated for COVID-19. This number is rising as COVID-19 infections have fallen sharply since a mid-September peak. Some people are worried about possible side-effects here, according to a survey of 18,000 people released on Thursday. India reported 24,037 new COVID-19 infections Thursday – fewer than 30,000 for a fourth straight day. The new infections took India’s total to 9.96 million, the second highest in the world. More than 1,44,000 people have died.
Until early last month, India had looked set to overtake the infection tally of the United States. But the gap between them has since widened significantly. US cases have now risen to more than 16 million.
The Centre has said it could soon approve some of the vaccines that have sought emergency use authorization. Among them are the Oxford-AstraZeneca one and the Pfizer/BioNTech shot. The latter is already being used in the United States and Britain.
India wants to roll out vaccines here in a few weeks, initially focusing on people more exposed to the virus and over 50. But a survey by New Delhi-based citizen-survey platform ‘LocalCircles’ found that about 69 per cent of respondents saw no urgent need to get immunised.
“It appears some of the key reasons for the hesitancy are limited information about side-effects and its efficacy levels. Also a growing belief in parts of the population that COVID-19 cannot affect them because of their high immunity levels, has led to hesitancy,” ‘LocalCircles’ said in a statement.
Many people in the survey said they believed ‘we are moving towards herd immunity’. Jiaul Haque is a software engineer from the eastern state of Assam. He said he thought he had already developed some kind of immunity to COVID-19. He asserted he would like to see how the various vaccines work on other people before he signs up for one.
“The vaccine has not passed the regular duration of testing,” the 36-year-old said. All vaccine companies are in a race against each other, so I’m also concerned about that,” said Haque.
