Got Your Covid Jab? Now Convince Others To Do So

Experts say people refusing to get vaccinated are a risk to those who have taken their shots, and to economic recovery

How can we stop another Covid wave if people refuse to get vaccinated? America faces this question now as its weekly cases have increased fourfold since June. Most Americans who wanted to get vaccinated are vaccinated, but the rest are proving hard to convince. America is facing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”.

India could find itself in the same spot a few months down. That’s why Prime Minister Modi spoke about vaccine hesitancy in his Mann ki Baat on June 27. “Trust science, not rumours, and trust our scientists who have worked day and night to develop these vaccines,” he told the nation.

The good news is that vaccine hesitancy is not a very big problem in India. The Economist says it has declined from about 35% in December to just over 20% now. It’s a lot better than the US, where 30% still answer “no” or “don’t know” to the question, “Would you get a Covid-19 vaccine?”

But even 20% hesitancy could be too much with a variant like Delta that hops from one person to six, on average. Last year, with a slower virus, scientists thought vaccinating 60% of the population could get us to herd immunity. Now nobody knows.