Andhra sets new record, administers 1.3 mn doses on Sunday, half of the day's national figure

The Jaganmohan Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh vaccinated a record number of people against Covid-19 by administering over 13 lakh doses in a single day.

This figure of 13.4 lakh doses doses at 9:00 pm is claimed to be “almost 50 per cent of the total Covid-19 doses administered across the country on Sunday”.

According to state health department, 13,45,004 people across the 13 districts were given the jabs under the special drive. The highest of over 1.6 lakh doses was in West Godavari district, closely followed by East Godavari district. The drive was carried out at 4,589 centres across AP, involving the services of 28,917 medical staff, about 40,000 Asha workers and others.

A similar record was also held by Andhra Pradesh from April 14, during the four day Tika Utsav as announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when the state had administered 6.29 lakh doses. It was hailed by CM Reddy as “the highest single-day Covid-19 vaccination number by any state in the country”.

AP could achieve the feat by leveraging the services of the village and ward-level volunteers the Reddy government had recruited earlier to act as delivery agents of all the government services like ration and old-age pensions at the ground level.

However, Andhra Pradesh could not continue with the momentum as vaccine supply from the government of India dwindled due to low availability of Covishield and Covaxin.

“Leveraging the village and ward volunteers system, we have not only established our capability of vaccinating over six lakh people per day but also set up a model for all the states to emulate. However, we could not continue the same drive as the vaccine stocks have completely run out,” Reddy had said in a letter in April to Modi while appealing for vaccine stocks.

Now, as the vaccine supply has gradually improved, the state government went for a special vaccination drive on Sunday.

“This is a remarkable achievement showing that our medical teams and other staff can take up over one million vaccinations a day if the central government can maintain the supply,” a senior health official remarked.

Over one lakh doses were given in Visakhapatnam, East Godavari, West Godavari, Krishna, Guntur and Chittoor districts.

Meanwhile, AP has recorded 5,646 new cases on Sunday when 1,00,001 samples were tested. The active Covid-19 cases at present are 63,068.