Karnataka to inoculate journalists on priority basis treating them as frontline workers

May 5, 2021

Following a discussion in the Cabinet meeting, Karnataka joined the list of states declaring journalists as ‘frontline workers’. More than a year after the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa on Tuesday announced that journalists in Karnataka will be considered as frontline workers and will be administered vaccines on priority.
“Our government has decided to consider journalists as frontline workers and accord priority in vaccination against Covid-19. We appeal to mediapersons, especially television journalists, to help us create awareness and avoid panic over the need for hospitalisation, oxygen, ventilators etc.\
You can help create awareness about who needs hospitalisation and who doesn’t. During times of a public health crisis, all of us have to come together,” Yediyurappa said. Since the state is facing a shortage of vaccines, inoculating journalists under the ‘frontline workers’ quota may take a day or two to take off.

The New Indian Express in its campaign had urged the Union as well as State governments to recognise journalists as frontline workers. In April this year, the Editor’s Guild had even written to the Centre to acknowledge the work of journalists as frontline services.

More than 150 journalists have died due to Covid-19 while on duty in India. Karnataka joined the likes of Punjab, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu in deeming journalists as frontline workers.
Opposition leaders as well as those from the BJP has been calling for the government to identify journalists as frontline workers and administer vaccines to them considering they report on the ground and come in close contact with Covid-19 patients and their kin apart from doctors, healthcare workers and crematorium staff.