Representative image
CHENNAI: The pandemic’s second wave which spread from big cities into smaller towns and villages and its resultant impact on life and livelihood has made more Indians, specifically those in smaller towns and rural areas, shed their reluctance over Covid vaccination, a survey released on Monday showed.
However, the pace of vaccination across the country was hampered with the majority of the rural population complaining about lack of knowledge to register on the CoWIN portal or they did not know how to register for the vaccine itself.
The good news is that India is slowly shedding vaccine hesitancy. As many as 78% of Indians in large towns were “extremely willing to take vaccines” as of May over 62% in March, Boston Consulting Group’s Covid- 19 Consumer Sentiment Survey said. And 74% Indians in smaller towns answered in the affirmative to the question “Can you tell us as of today would you be willing to take the Covid-19 vaccine if it was made available to you”, against just 39% in March. 63% of people were willing adopters of the Covid vaccine in May in rural India as against 41% in March.