Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Tuesday directed the health authorities to start vaccination of teachers, non-teaching staff and students in the 18-45 age group at all schools and colleges from June 21 to enable educational institutes in the state to open safely.
He also directed the department to ensure that all persons with co-morbidities as well as disabilities, government employees, judicial officers and lawyers are vaccinated on priority. “Staff in hospitality industry, parlours, service outlets, including shops, restaurants and gyms, should also be vaccinated at the earliest,” he said at the Covid review meeting.
Expressing concern over the gender gap in vaccination, the CM directed the health experts to identify the reasons and rectify the situation. He also ordered ward-level and village-level campaigns in urban and rural areas that saw higher positivity or mortality rates in order to prioritise them for vaccination.
Claiming that Punjab was perhaps the only state in the country to have put in place a vaccination strategy for the 18-45 age group that prioritises the poor and the vulnerable, he expressed happiness that almost 1 lakh co-morbid youth and 3.5 lakh young construction and other workers had been vaccinated for free by the state government.
Health secretary Hussan Lal said the number of Covishield doses received by the state so far for the 18-45 age group stood at 5,86,000, of which 5,30,610 had been used, leaving a balance stock of 55,390. Of 1,50,850 Covaxin doses received, 66,040 have been utilised.
{{/usCountry}}Health secretary Hussan Lal said the number of Covishield doses received by the state so far for the 18-45 age group stood at 5,86,000, of which 5,30,610 had been used, leaving a balance stock of 55,390. Of 1,50,850 Covaxin doses received, 66,040 have been utilised.
{{/usCountry}}Experts to study effectiveness of vaccine
The chief minister also directed the expert group headed by Dr Gagandeep Kang to start studying the effectiveness of vaccines in the context of the new variants of the coronavirus.
“The month-wise whole genome sequencing has shown that in March, 95% of the problem was due to the UK variant. In April, the Delta variant started increasing, and became dominant, reaching nearly 90%, in May,” he said, adding, “It was a matter of concern that the Brazil variant (B1) had increased from 1% in April and now stood at 8%.”
The CM underlined the need to get more samples analysed to have a clearer picture and formulate a proper strategy. The state’s adviser, Dr KK Talwar, said an expert group was being constituted to analyse the audit of patients who had been on ventilator during the second wave to provide learnings for the future. Dr Talwar is making efforts to arrange for genome sampling at Patiala’s Rajindra Hospital.
Capt also ordered tracking of all black fungus (mucormycosis) cases, which currently stand at 441 in the state. Of these, 51 cases have already been cured and 308 are undergoing treatment.