First vaccination cycle to end on February 12
AMRITSAR: The state health department on Friday decided to end the first cycle of the ongoing Covid vaccination drive on February 12, giving the registered health workers only a few days to take their first doses. After February 12, the next cycle of the drive will begin and second doses of vaccine will be administered to those who had received their first jabs.
However, over 60% of the registered health workers in Punjab are likely to give the vaccination drive a miss as it has been learnt that over half of those being invited to receive the vaccine daily are not turning up.
As per state health department, around one lakh health workers out of the total 1.9 lakh registered beneficiaries have already skipped their scheduled sessions and opted not to take the shot. Till Friday evening, a total of 54,991 (nearly 33%) health workers in Punjab were inoculated against the target of 1,64,847.
Meanwhile on Friday, 4014 people were given vaccines at 196 locations across the state against the target of 18,985.
“Till now, only 33% of the targeted beneficiaries have attended their scheduled session. The Union health ministry is directing the states to complete their first cycle as soon as possible and we have decided to conclude it by February 12, just to give one more chance to the health workers. We will finish scheduling the sessions for the entire 1.9 lakh registered health workers in next three to four days, but the health department will wait for the beneficiaries to end the hesitancy and take the shots till February 12,” said Punjab nodal officer for Covid-19 Dr Rajesh Bhaskar.
“After that, no health worker will be given the first dose of the vaccine and those who will skip the vaccination drive now will not be inoculated in later phases. In the initial days, we understood that people were waiting to see how the procedure panned out and if adverse effects were reported. However, we have not seen any case of adverse effect of immunisation (AEFI) till now and it is high time for beneficiaries to come forward,” the nodal officer added.
He further said that those who have skipped their first scheduled sessions can still visit any vaccine site of the state to take the shot.
Punjab logs 11 more Covid deaths
Eleven more people succumbed to coronavirus, taking the toll to 5,601 in Punjab on Friday, while the infection tally rose to 1.73 lakh with 261 new cases, a health bulletin said.