The Narendra Modi-led Centre has assured to provide nearly 25 lakh free doses of vaccines against Covid-19 to Jharkhand in the month of July, health officials said on Sunday, adding that an additional 8 lakh doses will also be be made available for purchase by private healthcare facilities in the State during the month.
Data shared by the Health Department highlighted that the Centre will provide as many as 24,85,150 doses of vaccine free of cost to
the state and at least 8,28,390 doses will be earmarked for purchase by private hospitals and diagnostic clinics across the tribal state.
The Centre, as per details with the state health department, has assured supply of 20,62,310 doses of Covishield and 4,22,840 doses of Covaxin free of cost to Jharkhand. The private institutions in the state will be able to purchase from 6,87,440 Covishield doses and 1,40,950 doses of Covaxin made available to the state for paid usage.
The nodal officer for health department’s Information, Education and Communication (IEC) wing, Dr. Siddharth Tripathi on Sunday said that the state has the
infrastructure to administer at least 3 lakh vaccine doses every day.
“We currently have the infrastructure to administer close to 1 crore vaccine jabs every month, so the state will not face any major problem in administering the vaccines provided by the Centre,” said Tripathi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had recently announced that the Government of
India will provide free vaccine for all residents above the age of 18 years to all the states and union territories across India from June 21 onwards.
So far, the states had to purchase vaccines for beneficiaries in the age bracket of 18 years to 44 years, while the Centre provided free vaccines for beneficiaries above the age of 44 years.
As per government data, the state has so far received 63,80,310 doses of vaccine against Covid-19 and used 55,32,223 of them. On an average, at least 1 lakh residents have received either Covishield or Covaxin jab every day in the state in the past one week.
As per data with the National Health Mission (NHM), there are at least 3377 Government-run vaccination centres in Jharkhand where jabs are administered free of cost to the beneficiaries.
The number of vaccination centres will be gradually increased once the supply of vaccine from the Centre increases, officials said.