High court says Tripura’s Covid-19 vaccination figures are inaccurate

The Tripura high court said that the National Health Mission director may have considered the total doses of vaccines administered for arriving at the claim of 80% coverage of all beneficiaries, forgetting that a substantial part of the population has received two doses.

Tripura high court on Friday termed the state’s claim to have administered the first dose of Covid vaccines to 80% of all eligible people including 98% in the 45+ age category as “inaccurate” and asked for correct information at the earliest. The health department was, however, sticking to its figures.

A health department official in Tripura government led by Biplab Kumar Deb said the figures given by the state were correct. (PTI)

The court pointed out contradiction in data to point out that National Health Mission (NHM) director Dr Siddharth Shiv Jaiswal’s quote, published on June 25, claiming around 80% of all eligible population and 98% of residents above 45 years of age had been given their first dose of the vaccine were not accurate.

The court observed that as per the government affidavit, the state has nearly 2.686 million eligible residents above 18 years of age and nearly 1.236 million residents above 45 years of age.

“From any angle, neither of these two claims was accurate.... On the date when the Mission Director made these claims, the total vaccine doses administered was 2.427 million, of which, 566,458 were second doses. Therefore, the total number of people vaccinated was 1.860 million. Perhaps, he has taken the total doses of vaccines administered for arriving at this 80% coverage, forgetting that a substantial part of it was administered to the same person as a second dose,” the court order reads.

The court added that roughly 1.437 million doses were administered to people above 45 years at the time and 566,458 residents got their second doses and most of them are from the 45+ age group.

“Around 900,000 out of 1.236 million people over 45 years of age were given the vaccines. This certainly does not come to 98% of the population in that age group,” the court said.

The court asked the NHM director to soon issue an official statement pointing out either there was an error on his side or a misunderstanding on the part of the press in understanding the figures.

Reacting to the high court order, a senior health official said on condition of anonymity that the department’s calculation was correct. “We have checked our figures and we stick to the 98% vaccination coverage claim. There might be some miscommunication between our office and the court. We will submit an affidavit at the earliest.”