More than 2,000 Uttarakhand police personnel have reportedly tested positive for Covid-19 during the country’s brutal second wave, even though 93 per cent of them had been completely vaccinated.
In the months of April and May, 2,382 policemen tested positive for the virus while on duty, with 2,204 having already recovered while five died, The Indian Express reported, quoting data shared by authorities.
Deputy Inspector General of Police (law and order) and Uttarakhand police chief spokesperson Nilesh Anand Bharne said severity and casualties remain low when quizzed about the large number of infections in the police force. Bharne told the daily that even vaccine manufacturers had admitted that vaccines did not guarantee that recipients would not test positive for the virus even after getting jabbed twice.
Some of the police force was assigned to manage the Kumbh Mela that was organized in Haridwar from April 1 to April 30 that saw hundreds of devotees and wide-scale flouting of Covid-appropriate norms as a second Covid-19 wave taking hold of the country. The deployed police force was halved later as most of the main festivities were coming to a close.
However, Bharne denied any link between the deaths of some of the policemen deployed at the Kumbh Mela and the religious gathering. Data showed that two of the five policemen who died had comorbidities, while the other three had not been vaccinated.
The police had had a hard time in imposing the standard operating procedures (SOPs) on the seers of akharas and ascetics who gathered at the ghats on the two major bathing days due to severe time constraints.
Many had termed the religious gathering a “super-spreader” event with over 1,700 people testing positive for the virus over five days as the bulk of the festivities neared the end by April 15. Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to the chiefs of the akharas to call off the event on April 17, which prompted the leader of one of the largest sects of seers to heed the call.
Last week, Inspector General Sanjay Gunjyal, a top Mela official, said it was unfair to call it a Covid "super-spreader" as just 0.2 per cent of all the RT-PCR tests conducted in Haridwar since January 1 till the conclusion of the event had yielded a positive result and only 0.5 per cent of police personnel on mela duty had contracted the virus.