Vaccine hesitancy levels down to 23%
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New Delhi: As the Covid second wave is getting stronger in India, the percentage of citizens willing to take the vaccine has gone up to 77 per cent, according to a LocalCircles survey.
With the 90,000 cases reported daily and vaccination for all above the age of 45 years beginning on April 1, hesitancy levels are down to 23 per cent, the survey finds.
According to the survey, fifty-two per cent of citizens who took the vaccine did not have any kind of side effects.
Notably, the rapid surge that India is witnessing with daily cases going from 16,000 to 90,000 in two weeks also indicates that there may be strain variants different than the 2020 SARS-COV2 strain propagating in the country.
The government has reportedly claimed that both Covishield and Covaxin vaccines are effective against the UK and Brazilian strains of SARS-COV2, while work against the South African variant is underway at several laboratories, the survey said.
All of these developments have become primary drivers for more people to take the vaccine.
With vaccination for all citizens above 45 beginning on April 1, the daily inoculations are expected to jump to an average of 50 lakh a day. India has already administered over 7 crore vaccine doses.
There haven't been major side-effects reported in India.
The National Covid-19 Task Force of India after reportedly considering all "serious" side effects maintained that there are "no immediate concerns" and that the number of adverse events in Indians "very low".
The total adverse events reported are less than 10,000 and adverse event deaths post vaccination stood at less than 100.
The survey conducted by LocalCircles on March 1, indicated a 36 per cent drop in vaccine hesitancy within 45 days with 64 per cent willing to take the vaccine.
The latest survey has found out that the percentage of citizens willing to take the vaccine now stands at 77 per cent. The percentage of citizens willing to take the vaccine rose from 38 per cent at the end of the second week of January 2021 to 40 per cent in the third week of January 2021.
