Former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the COVID-19 crisis, emphasizing that ramping up vaccination was the key to battling the pandemic. In a letter to the prime minister, the veteran Congress leader said one must not look at absolute numbers but the total percentage of population vaccinated.

Noting that India currently has vaccinated only a small fraction of its population, Singh said he is certain that with the right policy design, "we can do much better and very quickly". Singh said the Centre should publicise vaccine dose orders placed and accepted for delivery over the next six months. He said the government should indicate how vaccine supplies are to be distributed to states. The former PM  said he is forwarding his suggestions for consideration in a spirit of constructive cooperation in which he has always believed and acted upon.

The suggestions come a day after the Congress Working Committee met and discussed the efforts required to fight the Covid pandemic.

Alarmingly, India has reported 2,73,810 fresh Covid cases in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day spike ever, pushing the country's overall Covid tally to 1.5 crore, according to the Health Ministry data released on Monday. Meanwhile, a total of 1,619 people died of Covid in the last 24 hours, taking the country's death toll to 1,78,769 so far. The daily active cases tally rose to 19,29,329.

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