YOGI ADITYANATH UP CHIEF MINISTER June vaccination target is one crore. In July, it has to be scaled up by three folds. For this, create a force of 1 lakh more vaccinators. Train nursing A students

To counter the vaccine hesitancy among rural people, the state health and family welfare department has decided to project newly elected gram pradhans as role models, take support of fair price shop owners (kotedars), religious heads, social organisations, local influential people besides organising intensive awareness campaign.

Additional chief secretary, health and family welfare Amit Mohan Prasad said the health department had urged the villagers not to believe in misleading publicity about the vaccine.

“The vaccine is safe, has no side-effect. It will protect them from Covid infection,” he said.

To increase the coverage of the vaccination, the state government has decided to focus in rural areas that witnessed outbreak of Covid-19 during the second wave. In May, the village surveillance committees had detected symptomatic and suspected Covid positive cases in 28,742 villages out of the 79,512 villages surveyed under the statewide ‘test-trace-treat’ campaign in Uttar Pradesh, said a health department officer.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday directed the officers to launch Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) in villages that are free of Covid case. He also told the officers to increase the vaccination three folds from July.

The state government has set the target to give one crore vaccine doses in June. According to 2011 census, around 16 crore population in the state resides in the rural areas and we will have to inoculate the entire rural population to increase the vaccination coverage, the officer said.

Even as vaccination has picked up in rural hubs, the vaccinators are facing resistance in the rural areas in majority of the districts. In comparison to the west and central UP, the vaccination is moving at slow pace in the districts of East UP and Bundelkhand region due to indifference among the villagers toward Covid vaccine.

To generate confidence among villagers, the gram pradhans of 59,074 gram panchayats have been urged to take the jab along with their family members. Majority of the gram pradhans have adhered to our advice and it had a positive impact on the villagers, the officer said.

“We have urged the ‘kotedars’, local influential people and religious leaders to motivate the villagers. The assistance of the NCC and NSS cadets is being also taken to bring the people – old or handicap to the vaccination centres, he said.

Additional chief secretary, information, Navneet Sehgal said, to break the Covid infection chain the state government had conducted maximum 70% sample test in rural areas.