80K vaccinated in Bengal in six days

The West Bengal health department on Sunday said 84,505 health workers had been vaccinated in the state in the last six days of the inoculation drive, which began on January 16. Sources said in the next phase the government was prepared to vaccinate around 11 lakh frontline workers, including police personnel and civic body officials. The list will also include people working in the offices of district magistrates.

Sources in the health department said that while the target was to vaccinate 1,18,372 people in the first round, only 71 per cent could be given their first shots. Those who had adverse reactions to vaccines — also called Adverse Event Following Immunisation (AEFI) cases — are responding well to treatment well and are stable, according to officials. Of the more than 30,000 frontline workers vaccinated on Friday, 11 AEFI cases were reported. In most of such cases, people are reporting vertigo, headache, and nausea.

The government has increased the number of vaccination centres to 351. Apart from Covishield — the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India — the state has also received 1.6 lakh doses of Covaxin, which has been made by Bharat Biotech and developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Daily Covid-19 spike drops by 5%

The daily spike in West Bengal’s Covid-19 cases on Sunday dropped to 389 from the previous day’s 410 — a drop of 5.12 per cent. The fresh cases took the total caseload to 5,68,103 while the toll linked to the virus reached 10,115 with eight more deaths in the last 24 hours.

The state continued to perform better in terms of recoveries. As many as 454 Covid patients were discharged, taking the total to 5,51,665. This brought down active cases to 6,323 while the recovery rate increased to 97.11 per cent.

Among the new positive cases, 93 were from Kolkata and 130 from North 24 Parganas. Among the eight deaths, three were reported from North 24 Parganas and two from Kolkata.

The state has tested 78,33,289 Covid samples, including 25,207 in the last 24 hours.