Uttar Pradesh: Big scale up needed to meet jab target

LUCKNOW: The district administration and health authorities will have to scale up daily Covid-19 vaccinations to an average of 25,000 per day to meet the daunting task of inoculating the entire adult population with at least one dose in four months. The Allahabad high court had, on Friday, directed the state government to vaccinate the entire population in next 3-4 months. The court had also asked the state government to file a detailed report on how it proposes to expedite the purchase of vaccines from global market.

According to data accessed by TOI from the office of the the chief medical officer (CMO), health authorities have administered 6.3 lakh doses from the start of the mass immunisation drive against Covid-19 in 111 days from January 16 till May 8 with an average of 5,705 inoculations daily. About 4.5 lakh beneficiaries have received at least one dose after the launch of the drive so far. Of these, nearly 1.8 lakh have completed two-dose course given 4-8 weeks apart and can be said to have been immunised and about 2.7 lakh have taken one shot.

As per district administration estimates based on voter and Aadhaar registrations, Lucknow’s adult population is about 36 lakh. This means that so far only 5% of the population has been immunised with two doses and overall, 12.5% of the population has received at least one shot. In other words, 31.5 lakh people (87.5% of the population) have not received even a single dose so far.

Experts said that on considering that nearly 10% of the population is not fit for vaccination, nearly 28 lakh people will be required to be vaccinated in next 120 days. This target can be achieved if daily 23,000 people are given the jab. And if we take out holidays and off days, the target will be to inoculate about 25,000 daily, they added. “Since two doses are required for full immunisation and these are given in a gap of 4-8 weeks, immunising all will be practically impossible in this period,” said a senior SGPGIMS professor.

Currently, the health department is running vaccination at 84 government sites. An average 10,000 people were vaccinated daily on weekdays in May. The pace has slowed down because private centres have stopped vaccination from May 1 due to procurement issues. While DM Abhishek Prakash and CMO Dr Sanjay Bhatnagar refused to comment on the issue, a senior health officer said, “Vaccination depends on availability of vaccine, number of registration slots and health condition of beneficiaries and manpower. The high court must also consider these factors. It is very difficult to achieve this target in four months.”