Ghaziabad completes 100% Covid vaccination for all categories

Ghaziabad: The district health department has achieved 100% vaccination (both doses) for Covid in the 15-18 years category

Ghaziabad: The district health department has achieved 100% vaccination (both doses) for Covid in the 15-18 years category. With this, the district has completed both doses of Covid vaccination for the 12-15, 15-18 and 18+ years categories.

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The vaccination drive for the 15-18 years category began on January 3 and was aimed at inoculating 2,34,488 beneficiaries in accordance with the target set by the state government. Officials said they have administered 2,47,701 first doses in the group while the second dose achievement crossed 100% on July 26 with 2,34,632 beneficiaries getting both doses.

“The district has completed 100% vaccination for all the three categories with 100% second dose administration under the 15-18 years category, which was the only one pending. All targets provided to us for all \three categories have been achieved 100% with second doses for respective categories,” said Dr GP Mathuria, nodal officer for Covid vaccination.

According to the last compiled records available till July 26, the district achieved 107.02% second dose vaccination for 12-15 years (target beneficiaries of 1,41,623), 100.06% second dose administration for 15-18 (target beneficiaries of 2,34,488) years, and 104.72% second doses for 18+ years category (target beneficiaries of 28,44,305).

Officials further said that 100% vaccination for both doses in the 12-15 years category was completed in the last week of June. The same was achieved under the 18+ years category in the first week of June.

“With 100% achievement of second doses in all three categories, our focus is now on administration of precaution doses for which we are already operating 109 sessions per day. With high rate of vaccination, our severity of infection has been very low since the second wave of the pandemic,” Dr Mathuria added.

About 2,00,891 precaution doses have been administered till Friday against the target of 2,90,067 beneficiaries.

According to renewed guidelines issued by the Centre, the administration of precaution doses started at government facilities free of cost on July 15 for the 18-60 years category. The first window for administration of precaution dose is 75 days with start date of July 15.

The age group 60+ was already getting the free precaution dose and will continue to do so, officials said.

The earlier limit for the precaution dose was nine months or 39 weeks after the administration of the second dose. The Union health ministry on July 6 reduced the period to six months or 26 weeks from the date of administration of the second dose.

The recommendation to revise the duration was taken up by the standing technical subcommittee of National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI).

Experts opine that achieving the precaution dose is a major challenge. “The health department must rope in more centres, camps and associations for helping out in achieving the target of precaution dose. Every citizen must come forward to get the precaution doses as Covid is not completely gone. It is due to high rate of vaccination in the district that severity of infection has remained very low in the past one year,” said Dr Ashish Aggarwal, former president, Indian Medical Association (Ghaziabad chapter).

The last Covid-related death took place in the district on June 29 while the precious fatality took place on February 6. The officials said that the rate of patients in home isolation during past one year has been more than 95 per cent which indicates less severity of Covid infection.

According to the official figures till July 29, the district has 171 active cases which include 36 fresh cases reported on Friday. The overall cases stood at 88476 since the start of pandemic while the Covid-related deaths stood at 474.