Second dose of Covid-19 vaccine being administered to beneficiaries in Bihar: CM Nitish Kumar

The state government has assigned Mondays and Thursdays for administering the second vaccine dose. Bihar has received more than one million coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine doses till now.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar said on Wednesday that work was going on towards administering the second dose of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine to health care workers in the state. He added that after their inoculation, people above the age of 50 and those below 50 and having serious illness will be vaccinated.

Bihar CM Nitish Kumar added that after their inoculation, people above the age of 50 and those below 50 and having serious illness will be vaccinated. (ANI file photo)

The state government has assigned Mondays and Thursdays for administering the second vaccine dose. Bihar has received more than one million vaccine doses till now.

“Vaccination work is going on. Two-section vaccination work is going on. After this, people above the age of 50 years and those below the age of 50 who suffer from serious illness will be vaccinated,” Kumar was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Bihar witnessed a low turnout in its vaccination drive to inoculate health care workers for the second time. Nearly 67 per cent of the health care workers who took the first vaccine shot on January 16 had arrived on February 15 (Monday) to take their second shot. However, the state’s health department said that there was no uncertainty among the beneficiaries to get the second shot as a total of 12,101 were vaccinated on February 15 against the 18,122 that were administered the first dose on January 16.

The low turnout during the second vaccination drive happened due to communication problems, as some of the beneficiaries said they did not receive any details through an SMS on their mobiles, a health department official told Hindustan Times on Tuesday adding that the respective facilities had been ordered to manually follow up with those that were eligible for the second shot.

Bihar has registered nearly 262,000 coronavirus disease cases so far out of which 259,748 people have recovered and 1,528 have died. The state has been in national news amid reports of irregularities in conducting Covid-19 tests. According to news agency PTI, reports showed that data was being fudged in Bihar, where the state government had been earlier accused of keeping testing rates deliberately low in order to conceal the severity of the spread of the virus.

Bihar’s principal health secretary Pratyay Amrit had said on February 14 that serious discrepancies in testing data were found in the Jamui district and added that action had been initiated against the concerned officials. “We have found serious discrepancies in Covid test data in Jamui’s Barhat and Sikandra.” Amrit said while addressing a press conference.

Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Jha had on February 12 asked for a high level enquiry into fudging of testing data. “There is no match of name and mobile numbers...10 times, ‘0’ (zero) has also been given as the contact number...no contact-tracing could be established,” Jha had said while citing a news report in the Rajya Sabha.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar responded to the opposition leader’s request and said that state administration had started looking into the matter and action will be taken against people found guilty. “I had a word with the Principal Secretary of the state about it, and he said the matter has been investigated. A total of 22 districts have already been looked into. This was seen at one location and action is being taken,” he added.