We couldn’t save our saviors: Violence against doctors, and one-stop FAQs: Covid vaccines
Opinion, Covid-19
We couldn’t save our saviors: Violence against doctors
In the past few months, doctors and nurses have worked day in and day out, in a system that was bound to collapse. They not only put their lives on the line, but also their husbands’, wifes’ and parents’. Their own children.
Yet, we forget to give them the basic levels of respect they deserve as human beings.
Doctors are being assaulted, attacked and abused.
Healthcare workers are four times more likely to be injured due to workplace violence than all other workers combined, according to the IMA.
A number of such cases of violence against doctors have come up recently, amplified even more so by the pandemic.
Assam
A doctor at a Covid facility in Assam's Hojai was mercilessly punched, kicked, and pounded with metal trash cans and bricks by locals and the relatives of a Covid patient who had died, allegedly due to oxygen shortage. The doctor is now hospitalised but stable.
Source- NDTV
Karnataka
A doctor cycling home for lunch was brutally attacked over a 6-year-old dengue patient's death, by a relative of the minor boy and three others. The doctor, who is in a stable condition now, is receiving treatment. The four people were arrested within 18 hours of the incident.
Source- India Today
There are more such cases.
Cases which did not get the people's attention, which someone forgot to record, or was too scared to record. Cases that no one even saw.
The IMA has recently written to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, pointing out these incidents, laying a strong emphasis on the verbal, physical and mental abuse that doctors have to face on a daily basis.
The IMA also said it has been constantly requesting the government to enact a central law with an IPC section, fixing the responsible officers to investigate, time frame for investigation and punishments to the culprits, without the option for bail.
A change is required, not just at the policy level, but also in the way we raise voices. This problem is not new, and is only escalating going forward.
It is up to us to make sure that these cases don't end up becoming just another viral photo on social media.
One-stop FAQs: Covid vaccines
1. When to take dose #1 after testing Covid-19 positive?
Individuals who test positive for Sars-2 Covid-19 should defer Covid-19 vaccination three months after recovery. There is no requirement for screening by Rapid Antigen Test before vaccination.
2. When to take dose #2 of Covid-19 vaccine?
The NEGVAC (National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19) recommends increasing the gap between the first and second doses of Covishield to 12-16 weeks, whereas the gap between Covaxin doses remains unchanged at 4-6 weeks.
3. Does testing positive after dose #1 affect your dose #2 schedule?
If you get infected between two doses and in such case you were treated for Covid-19, the Union Health Ministry’s new guidelines recommend deferring the second dose of Covid-19 vaccination by three months after clinical recovery or from the date of hospital discharge.
4. Should you worry if vaccine dose #2 is unavailable on your due date?
If the due date of the second vaccine is missed due to the unavailability of a slot, the most important thing to keep in mind is not to panic and, at the same time, not to defer the second dose indefinitely.
Also, do not interchange the vaccine in case of unavailability of the vaccine, which was administered as the first dose.
5. Why is the second dose necessary?
The biggest reason for getting both doses is easy and obvious: better protection against not just getting Covid-19 but also from serious illness and hospitalization. Booster shots, in general, allow our immune system to retain memory or knowledge of a virus for an extended period of time.
Research during the trial phase for each of the two-dose vaccines showed that, after a certain time, the immunity rate to Covid-19 plateaued with just one dose but that the second dose helped boost the immunity to higher rates.
The more people who get both shots, the closer we get to herd immunity*, too.
*“Herd immunity, or population/community immunity, is when a large part of the population has gotten vaccinated or has enough antibodies to resist the infection that it no longer spreads.”
6. Is it okay to take two different doses of the Covid vaccine?
Mixing of Covid-19 vaccines is not advised as of now in India.
For vaccines available in India- Covishield and Covaxin- no study on mixing the doses has been undertaken. The third vaccine approved in India, Sputnik V, interestingly uses slightly different shots for its two-dose inoculation regime.
Incidentally, two inadvertent errors in vaccination reported from Uttar Pradesh saw people being given doses of different vaccines. No adverse effect has been reported yet.
The bottomline
The most important thing is to focus on getting vaccinated. Encourage your family, friends and community to do the same. Instead of looking at numbers, we should all get vaccinated as quickly as possible.
One must also keep in mind the importance of the second dose. It cannot be skipped even if the dosage window is missed by a few days. If you fall outside that window, check with your healthcare provider for the latest guidance.
Sources- Health Ministry of India, CDC, UIHC
Like what you read? Share this article with your friends and follow us on:
Instagram| Medium| Facebook