Andhra Pradesh to vaccinate mothers of 0-5 years old children

The Andhra Pradesh government has decided to vaccinate all the women with 0-5 years old kids, in preparation of the possible Covid-19 third wave that is assumed to affect the children more.

Officials said the number of such mothers in the state would be about 20 lakh, who would be now vaccinated along with the 45 and above years age group. “The decision was taken as kids of such age admitted to hospitals need their mothers beside them.”

A state government panel has estimated that children and adolescents could form 25 percent of the about 18 lakh positive cases expected to be registered during the possible third wave of the pandemic. About 45,000 patients under 18 years of age could require hospital admission, the AP Paediatric Covid-19 Task Force Committee said in its report.

To equip the health infrastructure for such a scenario, the Jaganmohan Reddy government has decided to set up pediatric wards in all the teaching hospitals of the state.

A decision was also taken to establish three multi-specialty children care hospitals at Visakhapatnam, Guntur/Vijayawada and Tirupati with Rs 180 crore allocated for construction of each facility.

Meanwhile, the daily new Covid-19 cases in the state have remained below the nine thousand-mark for the last few days.

8,766 positive cases were reported on Wednesday morning, out of the 93,511 samples tested. Active cases stand at 1.03 lakh.

Principal secretary (health) A K Singhal said that AP has conducted over two crore Covid-19 tests since the beginning of the pandemic in March last year. “While 2.67 lakh tests were conducted per million population at the national level, the same in AP is 3.75 lakh,” Singhal said.

17,79,773 positive cases were registered in AP till now. The Covid-19 death toll stands at 11,696.

Singhal also said that the 12th phase of fever survey has been initiated in the state.