A few days back, the state Governor called a meeting of Imams and Church leaders to help in convincing people to come forward for Covid 19 vaccination. The meeting was attended by officials of health departments, 17 Church leaders and eight Imams, the attendees agreed to extend cooperation in making the mission of vaccination successful. The governor reiterated the contributions made by the frontline workers, doctors, civil society organisations and the government to overcome the pandemic.
Vaccination is still low particularly in the hill districts and this is quite alarming in view of the ensuing elections. For the first dose the overall percentage of vaccination has slightly increased from 57.06 per cent to 58.67 per cent, while for the second dose it has moved from 43.06 per cent to 44.83 per cent.
In the hills, the districts of Kangpokpi, Ukhrul and Senapati are still lagging far behind the other districts with 20.82 per cent, 27.40 per cent and 33.77 pc respectively while it is 14.01 per cent, 19.97 per cent and 25.85 per cent respectively for the second dose. Kakching and Imphal West have the highest vaccination figures. For the state, the number of doses administered as of Monday was 14,30,547 for the first dose and 10,49,545 for the second dose. In comparison to the valley districts, the other hill districts except for Churachandpur and Chandel are lagging behind in vaccination. The state governor’s intervention is timely.
A few weeks back, the Union Health Ministry had asked state authorities to beef up vaccination while expressing extreme concern with the low vaccination in the state particularly in the hill areas.
Now that the notification for assembly elections has been issued, it has become more urgent. The Election Commission of India had also instructed the state to accelerate the vaccination process. In the last few days, positive cases had come down in the state steadily, but the daily positivity rate is quite high with Monday clocking 15.3 percent.
The state disaster management authority has also announced newer restrictions in view of the rising cases mostly suspected to be the Omicron variant. The official figure of the Omicron variant now stands at one for the state, while we are awaiting the results of the whole genome sequencing reports which takes about one week. According to an expert, in view of the recent surge in positive cases almost all positive cases could be taken as of the Omicron variant or that of Omicron and Delta combined. In view of the rapid rise in positive cases, night curfew in the state has been set from 9 pm to 5 am, while shops have been allowed to open from 10 am to 4 pm daily. Earlier, the night curfew was from 9 pm to 4 am.
In view of the recent spike in Covid-19 cases and the Omicron variant spread in the state, the government has made it mandatory for travellers entering Manipur by road or air to carry negative COVID-19 test reports, that too of RT-PCR. In the last few days, the daily positivity rate is increasing by leaps and bounds and as such the presence of the new variant Omicron is suspected to be the driver of the recent surge.
From a single confirmed case of Omicron, it has now increased to 39 and everyone knows the detection of Omicron variant takes time as it has to go through a rigorous process of whole genome sequencing. Some civil society organisations in the hills have protested against the authority’s pressure for mandatory vaccination for all. Yes, we understand that vaccination should be purely voluntary but the ramifications of non-vaccination has also to be understood as it involves public health and safety also.
