E-Paper
Health centres in Ghaziabad told to inoculate those above 45 who have not taken a single shot of Covid vaccine
The district health department has directed the primary health centres to take efforts to inoculate beneficiaries in the 45+ age group, who have still not taken the Covid-19 vaccine
The district health department has directed the primary health centres to take efforts to inoculate beneficiaries in the 45+ age group, who have still not taken the Covid-19 vaccine. According to officials, a week long door-to-door survey conducted from September 7 to 16 found that 102,698 beneficiaries in the 45+ age group have not even taken the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
In a communication on Tuesday, U P chief secretary R K Tiwari issued directions to the districts to identify clusters, where most of the beneficiaries in the 45+ age group have still not taken the vaccine and get them inoculated at the earliest.
“We have asked all our health centres to ensure that beneficiaries who have been left out of the inoculation drive get vaccinated. For this, we are calling up such beneficiaries from the Integrated Covid Command and Control Centre. We are expecting to finish the work of calling up most of the beneficiaries and asking them to come to the vaccination centres to by this week,” said Dr Bhavtosh Shankhdhar, chief medical officer.
“The door-to-door survey figures have been shared with the respective health centres and they have been asked to get maximum beneficiaries vaccinated. With this, we are also trying to increase the second dose coverage, which has improved following the increased allocation of vaccines,” said the CMO.
Till end of August, the daily vaccine allocation to the district was about 17,000 doses per day, which has now been scaled up to about 25,000 doses per day.
In terms of overall coverage, the district has set a target of vaccinating 2,806,929 beneficiaries, which includes healthcare workers, frontline workers, those in the 18-45 years age group and those above 45+.
According to data available with the health department, so far, 1,874,577 beneficiaries have taken the first dose, which accounts for 66.78% of the targeted population while 633,239 beneficiaries have been completely vaccinated, taking the second dose coverage to 33.78%.
“Both beneficiaries who are scheduled to take their second dose and those who have still not taken a single dose should be vaccinated on a priority basis ahead of a third wave of Covid-19. It is only after the second dose that proper protection is achieved against infection,” said Dr Ashish Agarwal, president of Indian Medical Association (Ghaziabad chapter).
According to official figures, there are 1,880,267 beneficiaries in the 18-45 age group, of whom 276,475 have taken both doses. In the 45+ category, the district has set a target of vaccinating 878,250 beneficiaries, 312,773 of whom have been completely vaccinated.
