State aims to inoculate 400,000 citizens a day

With over 27% or 33

With over 27% or 33.8 million people having qualified for Covid-19 vaccination after those above 45 years of age were allowed to get a vaccine from Thursday, the Maharashtra government has set a target of vaccinating 400,000 beneficiaries a day.

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To help achieve the target, the state government has asked all vaccination centres, both private and public, to operate seven days a week.

As a result of the new group of beneficiaries, the state witnessed its highest number of vaccinations in a day. More than 300,000 citizens were inoculated at 3,295 centres, with the highest, 57,000, in Pune. There were 216,211 beneficiaries on Wednesday.

“With more than 6,500,000 vaccinated, the state remains on the top in the country,” a statement issued by the public health department stated.

“Although the exact figures of beneficiaries inoculated on the first day are yet to come, the response has been very good in the state. We are asking private and government facilities to implement the vaccination drive all seven days of the week for the entire month of April. Some government facilities were implementing the drive three days a week. With operations for seven days a week, we expect the daily vaccination numbers to go up to 400,000 in the next few days,” said Dr Ramaswami N, commissioner, family welfare, and director, National Health Mission.

Currently, the daily average of beneficiaries is around 225,000. DN Patil, state immunisation officer, said they are planning to increase the number of vaccination centres by 300 gradually over the next few days. Until March 31, Maharashtra had inoculated 5,495,934 beneficiaries, while 749,926 have been given a second shot too. Dr Ramaswami said the vaccination centres have already been allowed to operate 24x7 as per their convenience and the call over it was being taken at local level.

“There will be more hospitals added to the list of vaccination centres. The hospitals have also been told to manage the drive in such a fashion that the wastage rate of the vaccine is reduced from the current 6.5%,” he said.

When asked if the corporate houses will be allowed to hold vaccination sessions on their premises, he said that the decision about it has to be taken by the Centre.

“Centre has told us that although Maharashtra tops in the terms of vaccination beneficiaries in the country, we need to double the rate of vaccination. They have assured us adequate supply of doses. We have been appealing people to come forward in large numbers for inoculation. Political parties and social outfits should ensure the people come to the centres like they beeline at polling booths,” said state health minister Rajesh Tope.

Dr PD Gandhal, deputy director, Nashik Division, said, “We have around 500 vaccination centres in five districts in north Maharashtra with the daily average of vaccination of 22,000 beneficiaries. We expect it to increase after the addition of the new category of the beneficiaries. Since 90% of the healthcare and more than 80% of frontline workers in our division have been inoculated, we would not have any problem in taking addition load of beneficiaries.”

State received 2,627,000 more doses on Wednesday ahead of the new phase that started from Thursday. State health department said that most of the centres received the additional stock of vaccines on Thursday. Until March 23, the stock of vaccine with the state was the 7,601,500 doses it received from the Central government.