Ghaziabad administers 66k jabs, Noida 32k in 3rd mega jab drive

The third-mega Covid-19 vaccination drive held across Uttar Pradesh on Friday saw Ghaziabad district surpassing the official target of administering 57,600 doses but fell way short of meeting its own target of inoculating 90,000 people

The third-mega Covid-19 vaccination drive held across Uttar Pradesh on Friday saw Ghaziabad district surpassing the official target of administering 57,600 doses but fell way short of meeting its own target of inoculating 90,000 people. Officials said that low availability of vaccines and people not turning up to take the shot were reasons why they couldn’t meet the target of administering 90,000 doses.

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According to the Cowin dashboard, Ghaziabad district administered 66,389 doses till 8:30pm on Friday and stood seventh in the state in terms of inoculating beneficiaries. Total 147 vaccination centres were in operation on Friday.

“We were aiming to administer at least 75,000 doses and prepared a micro-plan for administering 90,000 doses during the mega vaccination drive on Friday. However, low availability of vaccines hampered the process. We had only 67,000 doses with us, including 12,000 Covaxin doses, that is having low acceptability here,” said Dr GP Mathuria, nodal officer for the vaccination drive.

During the first mega drive launched by the state government, Ghaziabad administered 79,822 doses in a single day and topped among the 75 districts in UP.

Officials said that their micro plan was further hampered with beneficiaries not turning up to take the shot.

“Many beneficiaries booked their slots on Friday but did not turn up. Our staff kept waiting for them till evening but they did not come. All these factors affected the vaccination drive,” Mathuria added.

So far, the district has administered 19,43,348 doses, including 398,665 second doses.

Meanwhile, Gautam Budh Nagar district administered over 32,000 doses from its 142 inoculation centres on Friday.

GB Nagar district magistrate Suhas LY said almost all the centres achieved their vaccination targets for the day on Friday. “The district health department planned the vaccination centres in a way so that even people residing in the remote areas could easily come to the booths to take the jabs. Altogether, 32,561 vaccine doses were administered on Friday, of which 25,573 received their first shot,” said Suhas adding that this week, they have crossed last week’s vaccination figures.

The DM further said nearly 96% of the total eligible population of 1,589,815 have already taken the first shot.

Dr Neeraj Tyagi, district immunisation officer, said currently, the health department is left with around 25,000 vaccine doses . “With this stock, we can easily run the vaccination drive for three more days with an average daily vaccination of 8,000 doses. We have sent our requisition for more vaccines to the state health department,” he said.