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Healthcare workers and frontline workers who have not been able to get their first dose of Covid vaccine shot so far will be given one more chance to get inoculated and the States have been given February 24 (for healthcare workers) and March 6 (frontline workers) as deadlines for completing these mop-up rounds.
The States and Union Territories will be allowed to organise one or more mop-up round where they can cover those who have missed their scheduled vaccinations till date. For health care workers, this needs to be done by February 24 and March 6 to cover frontline workers.
If members of these priority groups still miss it, they will have to wait till for their turn comes up in general category, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said here.
Second dose
With 2,69,202 beneficiaries getting inoculated till 6:30 pm on Tuesday, 65.28 lakh health care and frontline workers have been vaccinated so far across the country. Bhushan also reiterated that the administration of second dose of the vaccine will commence from February 13.
The first meeting of the national AEFI (adverse events following immunisation) committee held on last Thursday assessed eight cases — three cases of hospitalisation and five deaths. After the examination, the committee concluded that among three hospitalised cases, which were discharged, two were cases of severe allergy reaction often associated with vaccination and the third was due to anxiety following immunisation.
Two deaths, on the other hand, the committee found that were not linked to vaccination and asked for medical records relating to three other deaths, Bhushan said. Vinod Paul, Member (Health) NITI Aayog, also the chairman of the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19, ruled out the possibility of vaccines being available freely for people to choose as they are still being reserved for meeting the public health objective. He said the vaccine scene is optimistic with many vaccines in pipeline.
Bhushan said two States — Kerala (65,670) and Maharashtra (35,991) — accounted for 71 per cent of 1.43 lakh active Covid-19 cases in the country on Tuesday. At the same time, 33 States and UTs have less than 5,000 active cases. Similarly, 15 States reported no death in the last 24 hours and no deaths in seven States for three weeks, he said.