NEW DELHI, Jan 25: The Centre has asked all the state governments to take penal actions against those “spreading rumours” about the efficacy of the Corona vaccines being used in India to fight against the pandemic. India is using two Corona vaccines, “Covishield” being manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India under license from Oxford University – AstraZeneca who have developed the vaccine, and “Covaxin” developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune.
According to an official spokesman on Monday, the union home secretary Ajay Bhalla had written a letter to all the states and union territories last week asking the states to come out with a mechanism to deal with all misinformation about the vaccines and take penal action under Disaster Management Act and the Indian Penal Code against those spreading rumours about the effectiveness of Covaxin and Covishield vaccines.
“I would like to strongly emphasize that the National Regulatory Authority in the country has found both the vaccines safe and immunogenic. However, it has been reported that unfounded and misleading rumours are circulating, in social and other media, creating doubt about the safety and efficacy of these vaccines. Such kind of rumour mongering, particularity by vested interests can create unwarranted doubts among people at large, and there is, therefore, a need to check all such kinds of unfounded scare-mongering related to the efficacy and immunogenicity of the vaccines,” Bhalla has said in his letter.
The government has launched the inoculation drive of COVID-19 vaccination from January 16 onwards across the country. However, there has been a lot of debate about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines both in social and mainstream media causing “vaccine hesitancy” even among the frontline workers discouraging nearly half of the listed beneficiaries from accepting the vaccine injections.
Stressing that the government is taking all necessary steps to ensure that the vaccination drive is successful, Bhalla said, “I would urge you (states) to put in place an appropriate mechanism to check the spread of such ill-informed rumours, and direct all the concerned authorities under the State Government to take appropriate necessary measures to counter the spread of all such kind of false information about the COVID-19 vaccines as well as promptly disseminate factual messages. Further, penal action may be taken against the person/s of organization/s, who is/are found to have indulged in such activities, under the relevant provisions of the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and the Indian Penal Code, 1860.”
(Manas Dasgupta)