India's Covid-19 vaccination drive still crawling after 17 days

After 17 days of vaccination, the Centre is still to reach the halfway mark in its target of inoculating nearly one crore healthcare workers.

The Union Health Ministry on Tuesday informed Parliament that the government aimed to vaccinate over 92.6 lakh healthcare workers, including 7,73,362 from Karnataka. The details of such workers have already been fed into the Co-WIN software, which is informing the shortlisted candidates about the jab.

Till Monday, more than 41 lakh healthcare workers had received the first shot, but the number is only about 54% of the people who are supposed to receive the vaccine as more than 40% of the healthcare workers are avoiding the shot due to vaccine hesitancy.

As many as 41,20,741 persons have received the first dose of the vaccine in 76,516 sessions held so far. Two states — Gujarat and West Bengal — have begun vaccinating their frontline workers too, and on the first day, 19,902 such workers received their first shot in those two states.

Read: Government aims to inoculate 92.6 lakh healthcare workers against Covid-19

Those who received the vaccine would have to get the second shot after 28 days and the protective antibodies would generate 14 days after the second dose.

Out of 92,61,227 healthcare workers identified by the state governments for vaccination, the maximum number of workers are from Maharashtra (9,36,857) followed by Uttar Pradesh (9,06,752), Karnataka (7,73,362), West Bengal (7,00,418) and Tamil Nadu (5,32,605).

The ministry also informed Parliament that 162 doctors, 107 nurses and 44 ASHA workers died (up to January 22) due to Covid-19 infections.

Asked about the expenses incurred by the government to fight the pandemic, the ministry told the lawmakers that the Union Cabinet in April sanctioned Rs 15,000 crore out of which Rs 11,362 crore was spent till January 15. From the central kitty, Rs 6,309 crore was sent to the states — Karnataka got Rs 303.69 crore — to improve their health systems.

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The vaccination drive continues even as the number of fresh cases continue to fall.

The country’s active caseload has shrunk further to 1.63 lakh (1,63,353), but 70% of such cases are restricted to only two states – Kerala and Maharashtra.

The ministry on Tuesday once again deputed two high-level multi-disciplinary teams to these two states to collaborate with the local authorities in instituting public health measures for better Covid-19 management.