NEW DELHI, 6 Feb: The Centre on Saturday urged states and union territories to exponentially increase the pace of coronavirus vaccination and schedule the inoculation of all healthcare workers at least once before 20 February.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan also asked the states/UTs to ensure that beneficiaries of the inaugural vaccination day on 16 January should start getting a second dose on 13 February.
In a statement, the health ministry said there remains a substantial scope for improvement in the number of average vaccinations per inoculation session.
“The state health secretaries were asked to analyze the daily variation in the number of average vaccinations and take necessary steps to increase them. States/UTs were advised to ensure 100 percent saturation of people who have already been registered on CoWin digital platform. They were also asked to organize simultaneous vaccination sessions/day in the health facility wherever possible. Each state/UT was advised to devise a state-specific strategy to achieve this target,” it said.
The states/UTs were also advised to ensure regular review meetings of the state, district and block task force to assess emerging challenges, understand ground issues and promptly address them at appropriate levels, it said.
“Every state/UT must schedule all healthcare workers for vaccination at least once before 20 February, 2021, and immediately thereafter organize mop-up rounds for them. Similarly, all frontline workers must be scheduled for vaccination at least once before 6 March, 2021, and immediately thereafter organize mop-up rounds for them,” the ministry said.
The ministry said the failure of potential beneficiaries to get vaccinated in the mop-up round would automatically push them to age-appropriate vaccination category.
The health secretary also reiterated the need for adequate attention to issuance of provisional digital vaccination certificates after the first dose and final certificate after completing the second dose; importance of authentication of beneficiaries; and timely data reconciliation on CoWIN application.
He added that CoWIN 2.0 version will be released soon. (PTI)
