By Nava Thakuria
Geneva/ Guwahati: As more than 650 journalists died of Covid-19 in 60 countries during the last ten months and counting every day, India has consolidated its position by avoiding any death due to novel corona virus infection among the scribe’s fraternity since December 15 last.
Now India emerges as the fourth corona affected countries with 53 media casualties behind of Peru (95), Brazil (66), Mexico (54) and followed by Bangladesh (43), Ecuador (42), Italy (38), USA (33), Pakistan (22), Turkey (17), UK (14), Panama (11), Bolivia (9), etc, said Blaise Lempen, general secretary to Press Emblem Campaign (PEC).
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Deploring that many journo-deaths due to Covid-19 complications around the world could have been prevented, the PEC insists on necessary financial assistance to the victim-families by the concerned nations. Appreciating India’s massive Covid-19 vaccination program last week, it observed that the media workers should get priority access to immunization upon request.
India in the first phase, decided to vaccinate 30 million people with the New Delhi approved Oxford-Astra Zeneca’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. Later the drive will cover ten times more populace in the second phase, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed as high as the population of only three countries (China, India and the US) with 300 million.
Two journalists died of Covid-19 aggravated ailments on December 15 to increase the tally of corona media victims up to 53. However, since the deaths of Mani Kumar Rai, a Siliguri based journalist, and D Vijayamohan, a Delhi based Malayalam journalist, no corona casualties have been reported. It is as satisfactory as surprising. Hopefully, New Delhi’s latest welfare initiatives to corona media victim families would be exercised with utmost sincerity.
*The writer is a senior journalist and PEC’s country contributor
