Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Wednesday accused the Central government of “hiding” the actual coronavirus death figures, even as he urged people to raise their voice for universal free vaccination. “GOI is hiding actual Covid deaths,” he said in a tweet, tagging a media report that conducted a survey on who people thought were responsible for coronavirus deaths.
Gandhi also launched a campaign to pressure the government for universal free vaccination in the country. “Vaccine is the strongest protection against the corona pandemic. You should also raise your voice for providing free vaccination to the people of the country – wake up the central government,” he said on Twitter, using the hashtag #SpeakUpForFreeUniversalVaccination.
He also shared a video highlighting the shortage of vaccines. His sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also tweeted for universal free vaccination and slammed the government over a “confused and dithering” vaccination program.
“We are one of the biggest vaccine-manufacturers in the world. Yet only 3.4% of our population is fully vaccinated. Who is responsible for India’s confused and dithering vaccination program,” she asked in the tweet. She said that on August 15 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared that there was a plan in place to vaccinate every Indian. But it is now mid-2021, and the country’s inoculation rate is just 1.9 million people per day, whereas “we need 7 to 8 million people to be vaccinated per day to achieve that target”, she said.