Covid-19: More than 1 crore Delhiites are now fully vaccinated

NEW DELHI: At a time when Delhi is witnessing a spurt in Covid-19 cases after months, the vaccination drive in the national capital has reached a new milestone. More than 1 crore of around 1.5 crore eligible beneficiaries have received both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, making two-thirds of the city’s adult population fully vaccinated.
With 95,417 vaccine doses administered in Delhi till 11pm on Friday, the total number of doses administered now stands at 2,47,09,943 and the number of beneficiaries who have received the second dose and are fully vaccinated is 1,00,83,854, as per the CoWIN dashboard of the Union health ministry.
The approximate number of eligible beneficiaries in Delhi is 1.5 crore and 67.2% of this population is now fully vaccinated. Also, with 1,46,26,089 first doses being administered till date, 97.5% of the eligible population has now received at least one dose of the vaccine.
According to experts, vaccination is our best bet against the Omicron variant of Covid-19 and both chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and health minister Satyendar Jain have been appealing to eligible beneficiaries to get vaccinated at the earliest.
Even as two-thirds of the eligible population are now fully vaccinated, district authorities have been facing an uphill task reaching out to the unvaccinated population despite door-to-door surveys and mobile vaccination teams. Due to relentless efforts to ensure 100% vaccine coverage, the number of people without even a single dose of the vaccine is now less than 4 lakh.
“We have been trying our best to reach out to the unvaccinated population through surveys and individual phone calls. However, there is a section of beneficiaries that we are facing a challenge in vaccinating,” a district official said. “Though we have made all efforts to reach out to marginalized sections like homeless, there are still people who are completely unaware about the need to get vaccinated,” he said.
Interestingly, while the most populous of Delhi’s 11 districts, North West, has administered more than 29.1 lakh cumulative vaccine doses, it is behind South West district (28.8 lakh) when it comes to fully vaccinated beneficiaries. While total doses administered in North West includes nearly 17.5 lakh first doses, South West has administered around 16.5 lakh first doses. However, South West is slightly ahead in the tally of fully vaccinated population with 12,26,219 second doses administered, compared with North West district’s 11,53,498 second doses.
These two districts, apart from West district (11,14,958), have administered more than 11 lakh second doses each and they account for every third fully vaccinated beneficiary in the national capital (34.6%).
North East district has administered the lowest number of second doses — 6,13,415.