(ANSA) - NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 22 - In a speech to the nation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated this morning with the milestone of one billion anti-Covid-19 vaccinations reached yesterday.
Modi said when the coronavirus hit the country, he wondered if India would be able to fight the pandemic and how it could immunize its vast population. "Yesterday's goal is the answer to all these questions," said the Premier. "India has only one mantra, which says that if a disease strikes impartially, immunization must also be impartial." Modi added that one billion doses is an extraordinary stop "This result is the image of the new India, the beginning of a new historical chapter". The event was celebrated yesterday throughout the country, with hundreds of monuments illuminated with the colors of the tricolor.
Conflicting views in the Congress party: Parliamentarian and essayist Shashi Tharoor said the government is partially redeemed after mishandling the second wave of Covid-19. "The billion doses is a reason to be proud, it must be recognized". Rahul Gandhi instead insisted that the government is hiding behind the triumphalism the bankruptcy of the past months and the pain caused to millions of families for the mismanagement of the pandemic.
So far, Gandhi recalled, only 31 percent of adult Indians have been fully immunized with both doses, while 76 percent have had their first injection. At the start of the campaign, the government promised that 75% of the adult population would be fully vaccinated by the end of the year.
(HANDLE).