Bad vaccination figures can’t be hidden: Rahul Gandhi’s jibe at Centre amid omicron Covid variant

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday chaired a high-level review meeting to discuss the Covid-19 situation in India and the nationwide vaccination campaign as fear over the new omicron variant remains.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Centre over the new Covid-19 variant omicron from Botswana in southern Africa. Calling the variant a “serious threat”, Rahul said that bad figures of Covid-19 vaccination “can’t be hidden for long.”

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi called the new omicron Covid-19 variant to be a “serious threat”. (File photo)

“New variant is a serious threat. High time GOI (Government of India) gets serious about providing vaccine security to our countrymen. Bad vaccination figures can’t be hidden for long behind one man’s photo,” Rahul tweeted.

With the tweet, the former Congress party president attached an image that showed 31.19 per cent of eligible beneficiaries have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus in India, with 6.8 million per day being the average rate of vaccination last week. According to the post, which credited a prominent media site and CoWIN portal as the sources, the required vaccination rate for 60 per cent of India’s population to be fully jabbed is 23.3 million per day.

According to the Union ministry of health and family welfare (MOHFW), more than 121 crore vaccine doses have been administered to eligible beneficiaries in the country, of which, as many as 73,58,017 shots were jabbed in the last 24 hours. Furthermore, more than 134 crore Covid-19 vaccine doses have been provided to states and Union territories (UTs) so far, and over 22.16 crore balance and unutilised ones are still available with them.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a high-level review meeting to discuss the Covid-19 pandemic in India and the nationwide vaccination campaign. As per a statement by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the meeting was attended by cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba, union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan, NITI Aayog member (health) VK Paul and PM Modi’s principal secretary PK Mishra, among others.

At the meeting, PM Modi stressed on the need to monitor all international arrivals, their testing based on guidelines, with a “specific focus on countries identified ‘at risk’,” the PMO statement revealed.

First detected in Botswana in southern Africa, the omicron Covid-19 variant has been termed a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Scientists have said that the variant appears to undergo multiple mutations – about 30 – in the coronavirus spike protein, which determines the virus’s transmissibility rate among people.

Several countries, including the US, UK and the 27-nation European Union (EU) have imposed travel bans on individuals arriving from the affected region of the Covid-19 variant. India too has released a list of many countries, including Israel and Hong Kong, from where travellers need to adhere to additional measures, including post-arrival testing for infection.