Dedicated days, booths on anvil for 2nd dose coverage
NOIDA: To increase the number of individuals fully vaccinated against Covid-19, Gautam Budh Nagar will dedicate three days a week for administering the second dose of Covishield and Covaxin, and reserve five booths exclusively administering the second doses on all days from Tuesday.
On these exclusive days, which are yet to be decided, and at the five exclusive booths — primary health centres in Dadri, Jewar, Dankaur and Sector 22, and Mihirbhoj Inter College in Dadri — all adults would be allowed to walk-in for the jabs, apart from bookings through CO-WIN portal, said officials.
The district has so far administered more than 1.9 million doses, of which only 426,439 are second doses, according to CO-WIN on Tuesday till 8pm. On Tuesday, the district administered 13,960 doses. It was only from May 1 that the vaccination coverage was expanded to cover all adults. Covshield has a waiting period of a 12 to 16 weeks for the second shot, while Covaxin’s wait is a month.
Most people have been vaccinated with Covishield due to more supply of the vaccine over the last few months, so the number of people scheduled to get their second dose is likely to increase in the coming days and months.
GB Nagar district magistrate
Suhas LY said, “We aim to cover 2,000 people a day in all these five exclusive booths. The low coverage of the second dose has meant that we need to focus more on it. We’ll soon decide the days on which only second doses will be administered.”
District immunisation officer Dr Neeraj Tyagi said that as many as 9,758 doses of vaccines were administered in 32 government inoculation booths on Tuesday. “Out of them, 5,224 persons received their first dose, while the remaining 4,534 beneficiaries took their second jab,” he said.
Covid-19 cases
Gautam Budh Nagar recorded two Covid-19 infections in the last 24 hours, according to the state department’s report released on Tuesday, taking the number of active cases up to 14. With this the district has had 63,253 total cases till date and 466 deaths.
Ghaziabad, on the other hand, recorded one infection that took its active case count to just three. The total number of infections in the district rose to 55,268 till date, while the number of deaths due to the disease was recorded at 461 till date.
Uttar Pradesh recorded 28 infections in the last 24 hours, the report added. The state had 352 active cases, while two people died of the disease during the same period. All deaths are subject to an audit by a state committee, the report said.