Jharkhand: Over 2 million beneficiaries inoculated
The state on Sunday achieved the feat of inoculating over two million people with the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine, a milestone achieved 85 days after the nationwide launch of the mass vaccination programme, according to the state health department’s bulletin
The state on Sunday achieved the feat of inoculating over two million people with the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine, a milestone achieved 85 days after the nationwide launch of the mass vaccination programme, according to the state health department’s bulletin.
While the state took 67 days to inoculate cross the 1 million-mark, it completed the task of immunizing another one million citizens in just 18 days.
On Sunday, as many as 80,517 people took the first jab taking the tally of total number of beneficiaries to 2.06 million (2,069,446), according to bulletin released on April 11.
However, health minister Banna Gupta, slammed the central government on social media for not extending adequate help to states. Taking to Twitter on Sunday, Gupta said, “People are dying; hospitals are facing paucity of beds. Vaccines are not being provided to states. Centre is not extending any help. How celebration (vaccine festival to be observed between April 11-14 as called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi) can be observed amid deaths and mourning. Stop playing politics over deaths. Modi Ji, stop finding opportunities amid crisis.”
The minister also talked to his Union counterpart Dr Harshvardhan over phone, requesting to make available to the state some vital medicines needed for treatment of Covid-19 patients.
Gupta informed the Union health minister that Jharkhand was facing acute shortage of medicines such as Tocilizumab injection, Remdesivir and other drugs urgently needed for treatment of Covid-19 patients. He also informed the central minister about shortage of vaccine in the state.
Since the beginning of nationwide mass vaccination drive on January 16 till February 26, the state has vaccinated as many as 304,194 beneficiaries, that comprise only health care workers and frontline workers.
However, the second phase of the vaccination drive was launched on March 1 under which certain other priority groups were included for inoculation.
From April 1, the Centre allowed vaccination of people above 45 years of age.
The state has so far inoculated 193,642 health care workers and 237,410 frontline workers and 1,638,394 citizens aged above 45 years. As many as 300,492 beneficiaries have also taken the second dose.
The state on Sunday sent 5,901 untested samples, piled up in different state laboratories, to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Bhubaneswar for Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test.
The state was currently reeling under huge backlog of untested samples.
