Nineteen days after launching the nationwide mega vaccination drive on January 16, the Government on Thursday said the second dose of vaccine against the coronavirus will be administered to healthcare workers from February 13.
“Only the first dose has been given to them so far,” NITI Aayog member VK Paul said at a Press conference here.
Details are being worked out, said an official from the Union Health Ministry.
Meanwhile, the Ministry said that nearly 4.5 million beneficiaries have received Covid-19 vaccine shots in 19 days.
“Many other countries have had a head start of almost 65 days. India launched the countrywide Covid-19 vaccination drive on January 16. The number of beneficiaries being vaccinated every day has also shown a progressive increase,” the Ministry said.
In a span of 24 hours, 3,10,604 people were vaccinated across 8,041 sessions, it said, adding 84,617 sessions have been conducted so far.
“While we are doing the immunisation of health care and frontline workers across the country, we are using 1,239 private places as vaccination session sites. At the same time, we are using 5,912 public hospitals as vaccination sites,” said Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan.
The Ministry officials also claimed that India has become the fastest country in the world to achieve the 4 million milestone in just 18 days.
Citing a survey, he said that over 97 per cent of 5.12 lakh people surveyed after being inoculated against Covid-19 have expressed satisfaction with the vaccination process.
The Government is taking feedback from vaccinated people since January 17 through its mobile app CoWIN and has got responses from 5,12,128 people out of the 37 lakh it had approached for feedback on the immunisation process, Bhushan said.
The nationwide inoculation drive was launched on January 16 with over three crore healthcare and frontline workers prioritised to get the jabs initially.
Bhushan said, “On January 17, we started taking feedback on CoWIN application through the Rapid Assessment System (RAS) from those users who have been vaccinated.”
“Ninety-seven per cent people are satisfied with overall vaccination experience. This data is based on feedback from 5,12,128 people.
Out of 37 lakh people to whom we sent the SMSes and followed up with outbound calls, a size of 5,12,128 people actually replied. They have been analysed,” he said.
Through the system, beneficiaries were asked four questions in a personalised message, a day after Covid-19 vaccine was administered to them, Bhushan said.
“Once the user confirms receiving the vaccination, questions are asked. If no reply is received, an outbound call is made to them through the system asking for feedback,” he said.
Out of the total feedback received, 97.38 per cent expressed satisfaction with the overall process of vaccination and 97.41 confirmed that proper social distancing was maintained at immunisation sites, Bhushan said.
He said that 98.43 per cent confirmed that they were informed about the process of vaccination and that it was given properly, 88.95 per cent people said they were informed about adverse event following immunisation and 97.13 per cent confirmed that they were asked to wait for 30 minutes for monitoring after they were vaccinated.
The Ministry also informed that only seven States have contributed to 55 per cent of the total vaccination drive.
Uttar Pradesh topped the chart with 4,63,793 vaccinations, followed by Rajasthan with 3,63,521, Maharashtra with 3,54,633, Madhya Pradesh with 3,30,722, Karnataka with 3,16,638, Gujarat with 3,11,251 and West Bengal with 3,01,091. In total vaccinations, these States share a percentage of 10.4, 8.2, 8, 7.4,7.1,7, and 6.8 respectively.