GUWAHATI: The Covid
vaccination drive for the 45-plus, which started in
Assam on Thursday, got a positive response in areas where polling is over or to be held in the final phase.
The state health department instructed the district health authorities to fully engage themselves to bring maximum people to the
vaccination centres to prevent the spread of the infection, which is showing a marginally higher trend compared to the situation a month ago.
In over 10 districts, where the second phase elections were held on Thursday, no vaccination drive was undertaken. The majority of the health officials in these districts were engaged in poll duty and hardly anyone came for vaccination.
“In districts like Dibrugarh, Sivasagar and Tinsukia, where the first phase polls were held on March 27, a good number of people aged 45 and above came forward. Also, in the constituencies, where polls are yet to be held, we received an encouraging responses,” said immunization spokesperson and director of health services (family welfare), Assam, Munindra Nath Ngatey.
Even though the state health department had set a daily target of vaccinating one lakh beneficiaries, Ngatey said they are expecting to achieve at least half of the target on the first day. “When the Covid-19 vaccination was hampered in more than 10 districts due to unavoidable circumstances, we cannot expect to achieve the full target,” he added.
Following the Centre’s instructions, the Assam health department said that vaccination will be offered on all days in the month of April at all public and private
Covid vaccination centres, including gazetted holidays. In order to expand the countrywide vaccination drive, the Centre wrote to all states and Union Territories on Thursday and asked them to make necessary arrangements to administer the vaccine doses on all days during April.
“This step was taken after detailed deliberations with the States/UTs on 31st March, 2021 to optimally utilize all Covid Vaccination Centres across the public and private sectors to ensure rapid increase in the pace and coverage of Covid vaccination. This decision is in line with the graded and pro-active approach employed by the Government of India along with the States/UTs for Covid-19 vaccination,” read a PIB release.
It added that the vaccination exercise, as a tool to protect the most vulnerable population groups in the country from Covid-19, continues to be regularly reviewed and monitored at the highest level. Daily new cases detected in Assam continue to be hovering around 50. On Wednesday, 49 new Covid cases were detected after conducting 12,966 tests and one death was reported. The latest Covid positivity rate in the state stood at 0.38%.
According to the Union health ministry, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh,
Karnataka, Punjab, Kerala,
Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh continue to show a steep rise in daily Covid cases. It added that 84.61% of the new cases are reported from these eight states, as 72,330 new cases were registered in the country in the last 24 hours.