Odisha meets over 92% of Covid-19 vaccination target, leads among all states

A little more than a week after the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, Odisha may have the highest vaccine coverage among the bigger states. The state has achieved over 92 per cent of its vaccination target.

Of the 1.92 lakh beneficiaries that were to be vaccinated till January 25, the state has covered 1.77 lakh – 92 per cent of the planned beneficiaries have received the vaccine in the state. While states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are leading in absolute numbers of vaccination of healthcare workers, Odisha is the leader as far as percentage of targeted beneficiaries is concerned.

"We managed to cover 92 per cent of the targetted beneficiaries through a smart strategy of targetting more health workers as we realised on January 16 that not all who are being targetted every day would report to the vaccination centre. While we expected some districts to underperform, we made up the deficit by pushing up the target in other districts like Nabrangpur, Mayurbhanj and Puri," said additional chief secretary, health department, Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra.

Mohapatra said the state also worked around the glitches in the Co-Win app by sending Google sheets to individuals districts for district-wise uploading of vaccination statistics and then updating the same on the app.

"We also sent SMSes on our own to individual beneficiaries. This helped us in tackling the problem in achieving the target. Unlike other states, where vaccination happened for about 3 days a week, in Odisha it did not stop except on Sunday,” said Mohapatra.

Director of Family Welfare, Dr Bijay Kumar Panigrahy, who is in charge of Covid-19 vaccination, said, Odisha's achievement was creditable as its frontline health workers did not halt their other routine activities such as pulse polio and deworming.

"We could do higher vaccination as private nursing homes were also roped in," he said.

Officials said 1.73 lakh of the total 3.5 lakh healthcare workers who are yet to be vaccinated would be given the Covid-19 vaccine shots by February 10. From January 28, the state would speed up daily vaccination so as to complete the target before the deadline.

"The multipurpose health workers who had initially announced a boycott of the vaccination have now agreed to take the shot. We would start the second dose of the vaccine from February 15, exactly 28 days after the first dose of vaccination was given on January 16," said Panigrahy.