Vaccination of senior citizens: GB Nagar leads in vaccine coverage across UP

Ghaziabad: Amid the ongoing Covid-19 vaccination of senior citizens and people over 45 years having comorbidities, Gautam Budh Nagar district has emerged as leader in vaccination coverage across the 75 districts in Uttar Pradesh

Ghaziabad: Amid the ongoing Covid-19 vaccination of senior citizens and people over 45 years having comorbidities, Gautam Budh Nagar district has emerged as leader in vaccination coverage across the 75 districts in Uttar Pradesh. GB Nagar has achieved 73.56% of its vaccination target for the month of March, while Ghaziabad has 49.7% coverage till March 20, according to figures of the Co-Win portal.

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The UP government has given a target of inoculating 65,048 beneficiaries to GB Nagar and 93,480 to Ghaziabad for March. According to the Co-Win figures, GB Nagar vaccinated 47,852 beneficiaries till March 20, while Ghaziabad inoculated 46,463 till the same period.

Against the target of 4,858,028 beneficiaries under the category, 1,877,497 were vaccinated till March 20 across the state with an overall coverage of 38.65%.

GB Nagar district magistrate Suhas LY said that the health department is taking up more than 5,000 vaccination per day. “We have plans to improve and can also surpass our target. We held a meeting with different RWAs, apartment owners’ associations and NGOs, among others, and it was agreed that they will help us in taking up more registrations for vaccination,” the DM said.

The online meeting was held on Sunday which also saw participation of senior police and district administration officials.

“Apart from improving our vaccination coverage, the meeting also focussed on various measures to control spread of infection through self-regulation so that we can avoid enforcement. So, everyone agreed that they will take all precautions and more so in wake of Holi festival and also during the upcoming panchayat elections,” Suhas said.

According to the portal figures, GB Nagar administered 105,644 doses while Ghaziabad consumed 107,881, including first and second doses, till Sunday afternoon. The figures included vaccine doses given to health-care and front-line workers, and senior citizens/ 45-plus having comorbid conditions.

In Ghaziabad, officials said that the vaccination process at the rural centres needs to be beefed up as the coverage is just about 8-10%.

District magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey on Saturday visited different vaccination centres in rural areas and directed that the primary health centres which are vaccinating 100-150 beneficiaries a day will now vaccinate 300 people per day starting Monday.

“We have termed the measure ‘village vaccination drive’, and the target of 300 per day will be taken up for the next 15 days. Under this, apart from the health department teams, teams of the revenue department will also participate and ensure that people come out in large numbers to the vaccination centres. The teams will be supervised by additional district magistrates,” Pandey said.

Under the plan, the workers as well as the best performing centres will also be rewarded.

According to the official estimates, GB Nagar has about 260,792 beneficiaries while Ghaziabad has 373,920 persons under the category of senior citizens and people over 45 having comorbid conditions. All the districts in UP, including GB Nagar and Ghaziabad, have been given a target to vaccinate at least 25% of the beneficiaries in March.