Ghaziabad to start with ‘cluster vaccination’ pilot project from June 21

The Ghaziabad health department will launch a pilot cluster vaccination project at two locations for all adults from June 21

The Ghaziabad health department will launch a pilot cluster vaccination project at two locations for all adults from June 21.

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The project will see the district testing its preparations ahead of the planned mass vaccination campaign from July 1 when every district in the state will be required to vaccinate 1 million people daily.

Central to the pilot project will be the door-to-door awareness campaign at the clusters in two areas - Indirapuram (urban) and Bhojpur block (rural). Each area will have a number of clusters made of a number of urban residential wards and rural villages.

“The cluster mobilisation teams will start its awareness drive three days prior to the pilot. They will work to remove people’s doubts about the vaccine and encourage them to come forward to get the jabs. From June 21, two teams will be assigned a central location at each cluster like community halls or any similar place for the vaccination drive,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer.

As per the Cowin portal figures till 6pm on Wednesday, the district vaccinated 785638 beneficiaries of which 672697 were given first dose while 112941 were also provided second dose. The district health department‘s data available till June 15 read that over 75% of these were from urban segments. From January 16 when the drive began, the district has clocked 5,168 vaccinations a day. About 60% of the district’s 4.7 million people are adults.

“In rural areas, a cluster may have three or four neighbouring villages, while in urban segments we decided that several of adjacent residential wards will form a cluster. The vaccination teams will continue to work at the cluster locations till the population in the selected cluster is saturated with vaccination. People need not register through Co-WIN,” Dr Gupta said.

The UP government, in its June 14 order that spelt out the mass vaccination drive, said that vaccination centres needed to be ‘near-to-home’. It also said that the vaccination teams may stay for four to six days in a cluster before moving on. If anyone is left out, the vaccination teams will visit the cluster again, it said.

“Use of hybrid model should be taken up in urban segments where beneficiaries will also be encouraged to register and take up vaccination at static vaccination booths while urban slums may be subjected to cluster vaccination. Workplace vaccination and near-to-home approach should also be used widely at such places,” the order said.