The former prime minister Manmohan Singh was on Monday hospitalised at AIIMS after testing positive for the coronavirus. The 88-year-old leader has been admitted to AIIMS Trauma Centre in Delhi, news agency ANI reported.
https://twitter.com/ANI/status/1384130664589447168?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwSingh, who served as the 13th prime minister of India in the decade between 2004 to 2014, had recently written a letter to Prime Minister Modi and suggested five measures to combat the COVID-19 crisis, including measures to ramp up the vaccinations and increasing the supply of essential drugs.
Manmohan Singh writes letter to the centre suggesting measures to combat the COVID-19 crisis
“The key to our fight against COVID-19 must be ramping up the vaccination effort. We must resist the temptation to look at the absolute numbers being vaccinated, and focus instead on the percentage of the population vaccinated,” he said in his letter.
Pointing out that India had vaccinated only a small percentage of the population, Singh stated that with the right policy design, “we can do much better and very quickly”. “There are many things we must do to fight the epidemic but a big part of this effort must be ramping up the vaccination programme,” he said besides making other suggestions.
Dr Harsh Vardhan responds to former PM Manmohan Singh’s letter
Singh, who served as the 13th prime minister of India in the decade between 2004 to 2014, had recently written a letter to Prime Minister Modi and suggested five measures to combat the COVID-19 crisis, including measures to ramp up the vaccinations and increasing the supply of essential drugs. In his response, Dr Harsh Vardhan pointed out the manner in which his own party members have conducted themselves over the same.
The Union Health Minister also emphasized the conduct of Manmohan Singh’s party men who have spread falsehood regarding the efficacy of the vaccines and contributed to vaccine hesitancy. He said, “A sitting Chief Minister of your party created a dubious world record of sorts by being the only head of government directly inciting people against an indigenously developed vaccine. Some Congress leaders even shamed the vaccines in public but took their doses in private, quietly.”
The Health Minister also raised his objection towards using different metrics to measure the success of the vaccination drive and the severity of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. “The emphasis you have laid on vaccination as an important tool to fight COVID-19 is well taken, which is exactly why India launched the world’s biggest vaccination drive and also became the fastest in the world to reach the milestones of 10, II and 12 crores administered doses,” Dr Harsh Vardhan said.