With Diwali shopping, socialising and events at their peak, mask and social distancing, compliance has hit new lows in India. Mask compliance has dropped drastically from 13% to only 2% in just one month. Compliance of social distancing has reduced by 50%, from 6% rating compliance high in September to 3% in October. These are the survey findings by Local Circles, which says only 16% of the citizens who travelled in October say mask compliance is effective while 96% say social distancing is not effective during travel; people say even large airports like Delhi and Mumbai are totally non-compliant on physical distancing.

So, with free-for-all everywhere, what will protect you from the fatal dangers of Covid-19? The answer is vaccination. But in Mumbai alone, the speed of vaccination dropped from 43,420 doses per day in September to 22,674 in October. Why is it so despite vaccines being available in surplus at the public and private centres? Some blame the drop in vaccination on a series of festivals and the prescribed gap between the two doses. It could be true to some extent, but not in entirety. The real fault lies with us. We have become complacent after the number of Covid-19 cases started dropping and more relaxations came into force. If taking all precautions is not possible, one can at least wear a mask when in the crowd. It is hard to find people carrying a bottle of sanitiser these days. If anyone carries a bottle and uses it at the shop counters, others give a piercing stare in disapproval of the opinion that the infection will not hit them anymore, because they believe there aren’t infected persons around them in the streets, in markets, eateries, on the trains and at the densely crowded airports.