Weekly vax achievement rate drops to 23% in Chandigarh

The Union health ministry has directed that all health-care workers must be covered by February 20 and mop-up rounds are to end by February 25

The achievement rate of the Covid-19 vaccination drive in the city dropped drastically this week with only 23% of the targeted group coming forward for the jab.

The vaccination drive was rolled out across the nation on January 16: health-care workers were covered in the first phase, followed by frontline workers from other departments covered last week onwards. (HT FILE PHOTO)

The vaccination drive was rolled out across the nation on January 16: health-care workers were covered in the first phase, followed by frontline workers from other departments covered last week onwards.

Among health-care workers, till Friday evening only 6,600 of around 21,500 registered beneficiaries received the jab, which leaves around 70% of the group yet to be immunised.

The drive will enter its fifth and last week on Monday. The Union health ministry has directed that all health-care workers must be covered by February 20 and mop-up rounds are to end by February 25.

Weekly vax achievement rate drops to 23% in Chandigarh

Among the frontline workers, around 40% of the beneficiaries have been inoculated.

UT in bottom 3 in terms of vaccine coverage

The central government on Saturday said that Chandigarh was among the bottom three states and union territories in terms of vaccine coverage, with just 32% of the health-care workers covered so far.

Chandigarh operationalised more vaccination sites and organised more sessions to facilitate more people for vaccination than most states, however, the steps have not yielded any positive result.

The single-day targets have increased from the bracket of 1,000-1,200 to 2,800 within one week, however, that has not proportionally made any impact on the overall coverage.

In the last three weeks, the percentage of people who got the jab against the number targeted has been on the decline from 52% (January 16-22) to 43.5% (January 23-30) and further to 42% (January 31-February 6). This week, however, the percentage further declined to just 23%.

“We are increasing the circulation of counselling material through internal social groups in institutes and also through advertisements. We are identifying groups, which do not have much acceptance for one-to-one counselling with the peers in respective departments. The issue was thoroughly discussed in the state-level task force meeting and as directed by the authorities we are increasing the coverage,” said Dr Amandeep Kang, director, UT health department.