Poll spotlights rural-urban vaccine divide

Lack of knowledge on how to get registered on CoWin platform as well as lack of knowledge on enrolment procedure threatens to impact the world’s largest vaccination programme — inoculating eligible Indians with Covid vaccines.Echoing the points raised by the Supreme Court on the existence of Digital Divide as a dampener, a Boston Consulting Group survey released on Monday showed, 63% in rural areas and 43% in smaller towns didn’t know how to register on the CoWin app for vaccination, 60% of rural residents and 40% of those in smaller towns did not even know how to enrol.But the good news is that Indians are slowly shedding vaccine hesitancy. The pandemic’s second wave which spread outside of bigger cities into smaller towns and villages and its resultant impact on life and livelihood has made more Indians, specifically in smaller towns and rural areas, shed their reluctance over Covid vaccination.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 and 63% were willing adopters of the Covid vaccine in May in rural India as against 41% in March.Among those who had not taken the vaccine despite being available, issues with registration on CoWin were the main reasons. Two thirds (65%) of all Indians in big towns faced issues with the app, with non availability of vaccination slots and fear of crowds at the centre. While 55% in smaller towns and 53% in rural areas had issues with the technology behind seeking slots for vaccination. BCG’s survey was fielded from May 23 to 28 covering nearly 4,000 respondents across metros and smaller towns and cities and rural India.Some categories have continued to show positive sentiment. For example: essentials, health, and home entertainment continue to be winners. “There is an impending sense of uncertainty. However, we have observed positive messages too. The spending sentiment has not been impacted similarly across categories. Essentials, health, in home entertainment continue to be winners. Some of the discretionary categories, however, have been negatively impacted,” said Nimisha Jain, MD and Partner, BCG India.

from Economic Times https://bit.ly/3vusUed
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