Covid vaccination: State plans to cover 33.8mn

With the new phase of Covid vaccination for those above 45 years beginning on Thursday, the state aims to cover 33

With the new phase of Covid vaccination for those above 45 years beginning on Thursday, the state aims to cover 33.8 million citizens of Maharashtra. The number of potential beneficiaries rose to 33.8 million from 17.7 million after the addition of all citizens above 45 years. The state authorities said the new beneficiaries will be accommodated at the existing 3,000-plus centres.

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Of the 33.8 million population over 45 years, about 4.5 million have already been inoculated as part of the categories taken on priority after vaccination kicked off on January 16. Maharashtra has inoculated 5,296,000 beneficiaries with first dose till March 30,while 733,000 of them have been given their second shots too. The state now aims at inoculating more than 300,000 beneficiaries a day. “We have vaccinated 992,000 health care workers covering almost all of them registered on CoWIN. Also, 851,000 frontline workers have been inoculated so far. Against the capacity of inoculating more than 300,000 beneficiaries every day, our average vaccination is 250,000. This means we can take up additional number of beneficiaries from the new group. If needed, we will increase the number of centres with the permission from the central government,” said an official from the health department.

He said that the number of vaccination centres has been increased manifold over the last one month after the new category of senior citizens and citizens over 45 years with comorbidities was introduced for inoculation. The number of centres before March 1 was around 800, which has now crossed 3,000.

The state government is expected to get an additional supply of 2,627,000 doses on Thursday. Until March 23, the state has received 76,01,500 doses from the Central government.

Mumbai tops the chart of vaccine beneficiaries with 1,126,000 beneficiaries (including second dose), followed by Pune (747,000), Thane (453,000) and Nagpur (360,000).