208k elderly vaccinated, no glitches so far: Govt
Another 5 million apply to take Covid-19 jabs, data collection only to monitor second dose, says health ministry
As many as 208,000 people above the age of 60 and those who are 45 or more and suffering from certain medical conditions have received the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine till Tuesday afternoon, while another 5 million people have registered for the jab on the Co-WIN portal “without any system glitch” since the window opened Monday morning, the Centre said on Tuesday, a day after the country expanded its vaccination drive.
The phase 2 of the vaccination drive for senior citizens and those with comorbidities began on Monday. Phase 1 involved inoculating health care workers and frontline staff numbering nearly 30 million.
In the first two phases so far, 14,855,073 Covid- 19 vaccine doses have been administered in the country till 1 pm on Tuesday, out of which 6,704,856 health care workers have been given the first dose of the vaccine and 2,598,192 health care workers have been administered the second dose, government officials said.
Besides, 5,343,219 frontline workers have been administered the first dose of vaccine till now, they said.
As many as 208,791 people above 60 years of age and those aged 45-60 years with comorbidities have taken the first dose of the vaccine, Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said. RS Sharma, the chairman of the Empowered Group on Covid- 19 Vaccine Administration, said there were no glitches in the system when people were registering for the vaccine shots on the portal. What happened was that people were looking for an app on Google Playstore which appeared similar to Co- WIN and started using that, when no mobile app meant for registration is actually present right now, he said.
Citizens can register and book an appointment for vaccination, anytime and anywhere, using the Co-WIN 2.0 portal or through other IT applications such as Aarogya Setu, he said.
He said the government is watching the system closely as it has to be “highly scalable”. “It should be able to take care of huge amount of load. After all, it is a program with which we will be vaccinating 1/ 6th of humanity and this program has to cater to millions of people at the same time,” he said.
The number of transactions and data transmission will be very large, he said. “We want data to be secure and free from cyber-attacks. We are taking best security practices. We are only collecting data in the form of name, age and gender as we need to monitor the second dose,” he said.
Sharma said state governments are coordinating with hospitals and supplying vaccines to them and “we are encouraging them to involve more and more private hospitals”. Total number of hospitals which are involved in this job are 26,000-27,000. There are also 12,500 private hospitals, he said.
Bhushan said though certain states including Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are seeing a surge in number of Covid- 19 active cases, “the fact remains that recovered cases are still more than 97% and India’s active cases are less than 2% (1.51%)”.
NITI Aayog member (health) VK Paul urged people to come forward to get vaccinated and stressed that public compliance for Covid-19 appropriate behaviour cannot be diluted. He said one of the reasons for the surge in cases in some states are large gatherings, parties and weddings. He urged people to maintain social distancing and avoid gatherings, stating these can act as super- spreading events.
Two states — Maharashtra and Kerala — account for 75% of the total Covid- 19 active cases, Bhushan said, adding India has recorded 113 Covid-19 deaths per million and conducted 157,684 tests per million population. response to specific concerns affecting the full range of pressing bilateral trade issues, including intellectual property (IP) protection and enforcement, policy development affecting electronic commerce and digital trade, and market access for agricultural and non-agricultural goods and services,” it said.
According to the report, while the United Kingdom remained the largest supplier of services, accounting for $62.3 billion of total US services imports in 2019, India was the sixth largest with $29.7 billion after Canada ($38.6 billion), Japan ($35.8 billion), Germany ($34.9 billion) and Mexico ($29.8 billion).
The USTR said that in July 2020, in response to outreach by it, India released US shipments of lactose and whey protein concentrate (WPC) that had been blocked since April 2020 when India began enforcing a requirement that those products be accompanied by a dairy certificate.
Prior to this shift in practice, US exports of lactose and WPC to India had grown steadily for years, reaching a high of approximately $ 54 million in 2019 before falling to about $32 million in 2020.