Siddaramaiah slams K'taka govt over 'unscientific' night curfew, claims vaccine 'shortage'

Lashing out at the Karnataka government for imposing a night curfew in 7 cities, Congress leader Siddaramaiah on Saturday dubbed it as "ineffective and unscientific". This curfew between 10 pm to 5 am in Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Kalaburagi, Bidar, Tumakuru and Udupi-Manipal will be in place till April 20. Disapproving of the curbs, the ex-Karnataka CM instead urged the state government to improve safety measures, increase testing and provide treatment. 

Lamenting that just 1% of the population has been vaccinated so far, he alleged that there is a shortage of vaccines in the state. Urging Yediyurappa to ask the Centre to ensure supply of adequate vaccine doses. Moreover, Siddaramaiah claimed that the administration had failed in the management of the COVID-19 crisis. Pointing out the absence of a uniform protocol for all districts, he called upon the CM to address these inefficiencies.

Night curfew in Karnataka

At present, there are 10,48,085 novel coronavirus cases in Karnataka while the death toll has soared to 12,813. While companies and organizations that have night shifts can continue to do so, those working in health, emergency, essential and E-commerce services have been exempted from the night curfew. Furthermore, passengers travelling to distant places by bus, train and flights have been allowed to travel by auto, cabs and other modes from their house to bus or train stations or airport and vice versa on the basis of their official tickets. Strict action shall be taken against those violating these guidelines.  A total of 52,42,211 persons have been inoculated in the state till now, 5,46,969 of them have received the second dose of the vaccine too. 

COVID-19 vaccination in India

On January 3, the Drugs Controller General of India accepted the recommendations of the Subject Expert Committee of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, paving way for the approval of COVISHIELD and COVAXIN. Manufactured by the Serum Institute of India with technology transfer from Oxford University-AstraZeneca, COVISHIELD is a Recombinant Chimpanzee Adenovirus vector vaccine with its overall efficacy of 70.42 per cent. On the other hand, COVAXIN is a Whole Virion Inactivated Corona Virus Vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR and NIV.

While only healthcare and frontline workers were vaccinated at government facilities in the initial phase, the inoculation drive was expanded to include people above 60 years of age and those aged above 45 years having comorbidities in the second phase. From April 1 onwards, all persons above the age of 45 can have become eligible for inoculation. Addressing all CMs on Thursday, PM Modi pitched a 'Tika Utsav' from April 11 to 14, requested the states to focus on micro-containment zones and contact tracing and defended the age bar for vaccination.