New Delhi: The Delhi government on Friday announced that it will organise a mass Covid-19 vaccination drive for all media houses. During the drive, the government will vaccinate all employees of electronic, digital and print media houses for free. The government will organise these drives at media offices.

While media offices across the country continued to work during the lockdown, the employees - including field reporters - were not qualified to be vaccinated during the first phase of the drive open only for health care and frontline workers.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had earlier requested the Centre to list media employees as frontline workers to allow their priority immunisation. However, since all adults are covered under the current phase of the vaccination drive, no special permission is required to immunise media employees.

According to a study, over 100 journalists have died in India due to Covid-19 in the last year, with 52 dying in April 2021 alone. The study, which was conducted by Rate The Debate, an initiative of the Institute of Perception Studies, New Delhi, found that 56 journalists have succumbed to the virus in the last four months this year, from 1 January to 28 April, 52 of these deaths were reported in the month of April alone. This implies, on average, about two journalists have died every day in April.

According to the Union health ministry data, Delhi has so far administered 36,87,783 doses of Covid-19 vaccine, out of which 28,77,331 were first doses and 8,10,452 were second.

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