Around 8 lakh eligible beneficiaries are yet to be vaccinated against Covid-19 in Palamu despite dedicated efforts made by the district administration to reach out to the villagers and run immunisation drives in the smallest of hamlets, sources said. 

Sources said the state government needs to restart vaccination at hamlets of the panchayats and at the village markets in a bid to vaccinated the beneficiaries who have been left out.

WHO's Surveillance Medical Officer here in Daltonganj Valema Deogam on being contacted said fear of injection and vaccine still persists among people who sound 'doubtful' of the jab.

She said that she and her team had collected 750 monitoring data of three districts – Palamu, Latehar and Garhwa – of July month where fear about vaccination has surfaced.

WHO official further said irregular availability of the doses too has left its effect on the vaccination where even if one person returned from the vaccination site without getting the jab, he told two dozen people about the unavailability of vaccine and thus this mouth spread went against the vaccination in a great way.

There is not a single block in Palamu where the eligible beneficiaries are hundred percent vaccinated, said sources. Palamu has 21 blocks.

The heaviest backlog of the vaccination is in the age group of 18 to 44 years. Here are 9,25,226 eligible beneficiaries who are to be vaccinated 

District Epidemiologist Dr Anup Kumar Singh said 2,83,044 eligible beneficiaries have been vaccinated till date which accounts for only 31 per cent.

Singh said people of this age group are just not turning up for the jab. He appealed to this group to take vaccine on time.

He said the jab teams never tire of motivating people to take their doses.

Vaccination percentage for the age group 45 to 60 years is below 50 percent.

Giving the figure, the epidemiologist said, “Here we are to vaccinate 3,03,147 eligible beneficiaries but against it only 1,36,512 have been vaccinated. It comes to 45 percent.”

“Here there is a target of vaccinating 1,90,032 people in the age group of 60 years and above where we have vaccinated 1,28,805 eligible. It is 68 percent,” he added.

Sources said little over 9 lakh of eligible residents here in Palamu remain unvaccinated so far despite health officials crying for it.

Civil surgeon Palamu Anil Kumar said, “We believe by now people must have understood the benefits of the jab but them not coming to the vaccination centre is a matter of worry.”

He said he has directed the peripheral health officials and workers to spur people to take vaccine.

DC Shashi Ranjan also conceded that people whose second dose of vaccine is due are not prompt in taking their dose and their number is fairly large.