• Vaccine Tracker: India is close to inoculating 8.24 million healthcare and frontline health workers with either of the two available vaccines.

• February 13, 2021 marks four weeks since the vaccination was flagged off on January 16 in India. There seems to exist significant vaccine hesitancy given that only about 1 in 10, or about 23,628 health workers inoculated themselves with the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

• Primary reason for vaccine hesitancy remains to be location lottery and the lack of choice of the available 2 vaccines

1.  Common Misinformation:

• In India, scam artists are cold calling people for money and personal data on the pretext of registration for the COVID-19 vaccine. The fraudsters’ calls include seeking the details of Aadhar card number (social security number) and bank details. Some phone calls offered a ‘pay and register’ scheme to people in the name of registration for the vaccine

• Similarly, a WhatsApp forward claiming that a corona vaccine has been launched in India and people must register for it by downloading a ‘vaccine app’ is fake. This WhatsApp message was being forwarded in November 2020 and was fact-checked by the Press Information Bureau of India

• Another fake news has also been circulating in the pretext of appealing money through appointment/registration. A website, impersonating the Indian government’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare website, is claiming to offer Covid-19 vaccine for Rs 4000-6000. The webpage even mentions the number of people vaccinated so far, but it is a fake website

• A woman, an earlier ANM worker & now in the final year of nursing course, allegedly drugged an elderly couple under the pretext of administering the COVID-19 vaccine and looted all their jewelry in Hyderabad, Telangana state

2.  Over performing/common trends in the last week:

• CrowdTangle Insights from the previous week- post related to the death of an ASHA worker during the treatment after being inoculated by the COVID-19 vaccine has overperformed by 32.25 times

• India Today’s post on Covaxin not finding international takers even when supplied free of cost by India has overperformed by 29.04 times