Guwahati, June 11: Worried over a sudden surge in Covid cases across India, the daily rate of vaccination in Assam has increased by 400% since last week. The daily vaccinations had dropped to about 20,000 shots because of a decline in infections.
But the launch of the Har Ghar Dastak 2.0 drive earlier this week has given a fresh lease of life to this mamoth exercise.
Teams of the state health department have fanned out to identify beneficiaries in towns and villages, who have not been vaccinated yet and bring them to the Covid vaccination centres.
“The objective is to inoculate all those people who are yet to receive the first or the second dose of the anti-Covid vaccines. Our focus is on the administration of precaution doses and children’s vaccination,” Kamaljit Talukdar, Assam’s director of health services (family welfare), told the media.
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The first Har Ghar Dastak programme targeted people who had not even taken even the first dose. The Har Ghar Dastak 2.0, launched on June 6, will continue until June 20. “Our target is to vaccinate all beneficiaries whose vaccines are due or overdue, irrespective of the categories,” Talukdar added.
The health department sources said 35.36 lakh second doses are due and overdue in the state as of Friday.
Nagaon has the highest number of pending cases for vaccination (2.56 lakh), followed by 1.94 lakh in Kamrup, 1.82 lakh in Tinsukia and 1.51 in Dibrugarh.
While more than one lakh doses were administered on Thursday, over 90,000 people were vaccinated until the filing of this report on Friday.
“Only about 5.27 lakh precaution doses have been administered in Assam to date, whereas about 20 lakh are due,” officials added.
Altogether 2.09 crore second doses have been administered in the state so far. The corresponding figure for the first dose is 2.43 crore.
The precaution dose is available in private facilities for all eligible persons above 18 years of age, whereas frontline workers and 60-plus eligible beneficiaries can avail themselves of the booster shots in government CVCs, and healthcare centres.
