A total of 68.27 lakh beneficiaries, including 2,15,133 on Wednesday, have been given Covid-19 vaccine in the country so far, Health Ministry said here.

Among them were 56.65 lakh health care workers and 11.62 lakh frontline workers. With this, over 57 per cent of the total health care workers and 13.2 per cent frontline workers have been administered vaccine shots.

According to the Ministry officials, 13 States and Union Territories in the country have completed giving first shot of the Covid-19 vaccine to more than 65 per cent health care workers.

Top among them are Bihar which covered close to 80 per cent of its health care workforce, followed by Tripura, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha. The lagging ones, which inoculated less than 40 per cent of the health care workers, are mainly Punjab and Tamil Nadu other than many northeastern States.

There was only one hospitalisation on Wednesday, the day on which there was no serious or severe adverse event following immunisation reported. There was no new death reported among the vaccinated people in the last 24 hours, said the officials.

Meanwhile, answering a question in the Lok Sabha, Railways Minister Piyush Goyal said on Wednesday that as many as 13,117 Railway health care staff received the first dose of vaccination till date. Also, a total of 3.7 lakh Railways staff have been identified as frontline workers and they would receive vaccine jabs in due course of time, he said.

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