NEW DELHI: The second round of vaccination against
Covid-19 has picked up pace with 37.5% of healthcare workers who were given their first shot between January 1618 receiving the repeat dose in the past three days, health officials said on Tuesday.
Some states and UTs have done well with eight having administered a second dose to more than 60% of eligible health workers. Goa stood out, achieving a 100% coverage among such beneficiaries. Gujarat, Tripura, Telangana and UP have so far covered over 80% of eligible beneficiaries.
Administration of the second dose poses a new challenge for the Centre and states as it not only requires more logistics in terms of
vaccine supplies and human resource but also needs following up with eligible beneficiaries to ensure they comp lete the vaccination in time. At present, India has approved two emergency use vaccines — Covishield and Covaxin — to prevent Covid-19. Both are two-dose vaccines and are approved with a dosing gap of four to six weeks.
“We must appreciate that in a country of India’s size, complexities and varying level of healthcare facilities, we have been able to ensure that in 14 states and UTs, 7080% of healthcare workers have been given their first dose,” health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said.
While Indiacompleted a month since the rollout of the
vaccination drive on January 16, over 60% of healthcare workforce and 26.3% of frontline workers in public and private sector have already received the first dose of the vaccines till Tuesday, taking the total vaccination count to 88.57 lakh, which includes 2.16 lakh health workers who are now fully vaccinated.
“The efficacy and effectiveness of a vaccination programme should be judged by the fact what proportion of the population was due for second dose and against that due population, how much population has been covered,” Bhushan said. Fourteen states and UTs have over 70% coverage of first dose among health workforce, whereas eight states vaccinated over 40% of frontline workers.
The fact that states with higher coverage also include those with significantly large beneficiary pool indicates the campaign is progressing well. Eleven states and UTs, including Delhi (42.3%), Punjab (36.4%), Andhra Pradesh (49%) and Karnataka (49.9%), have administered first dose to less than 50% of registered healthcare workers.
“We have asked these states to organise more sessions to increase their coverage,” he said.