The Uttar Pradesh Government set a target of administering 7 lakh Covid vaccine doses per day which will be ramped up from July 1 and 10 crore people will be jabbed by the end of August.
“The administration has chalked out an action plan and made all arrangements to meet the target smoothly and swiftly,” a Government spokesman said. Earlier, the state was administering about 4.5 lakh vaccine doses a day under ‘Mission June’.
While chairing a high-level Covid review meeting on Sunday, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath stated, “The decision of the prime minister to give free vaccines to all citizens above 18 years will boost the vaccination campaign. Taking advantage of this opportunity, we have to conduct our vaccination campaign to full capacity. Make preparations with a goal to administer 7 lakh doses per day and then ramp it up to around 12 lakh doses from July 1,” he said.
In this regard, the CM has ordered to increase the vaccination centres from 6,000 to 10,000. The Health department has directed the district magistrates to make all the arrangements accordingly. The cold chain capacity has been doubled in the state. From 80,000 litres, the capacity has been increased to 2.25 lakh litres to stock up the vaccine doses provided by the Centre, the spokesperson said.
He said from July onwards, to meet the target of 10 crore doses, the government will aim to administer nearly 12 lakh doses a day. Therefore, the next task for the state is to ensure that it has enough manpower and vaccine delivery centres. The services of more than 12,000 new nursing students will be taken for the purpose. The UP Government has tweaked its strategy and adopted a ‘cluster approach’ to ensure maximum vaccination. The entire population will be divided into clusters. Focusing on rural areas, more than 97,000 revenue villages of all the development blocks in the state will be divided into clusters. The campaign promising ‘ease of vaccination’ aims to vaccinate one cluster a week in the village panchayat ghars. The date and place of vaccination will be given to the villagers in advance in the form of ‘bulawa parchis’.
In each revenue village of the state, mobilisation teams will be constituted with gram pradhans, lekhpals, ASHA & Anganwadi workers, teachers of primary schools, panchayat secretaries and Yuvak/Mahila Mangal Dal. The cluster mobilisation teams will start the awareness drive three days prior to the pilot project.