Centre urges states/UTs to exponentially increase pace of COVID-19 vaccination

While there are 12 States/UTs that have achieved 60 per cent or more vaccination coverage of healthcare workers, the central government has advised them to improve the percentage coverage of vaccinated beneficiaries and directed that they must schedule all healthcare workers for vaccination at least once before February 20.

"States/ UTs were advised to ensure regular review meetings of the State, District and Block Task Force to assess the emerging challenges, understand the ground issues and promptly address them at the appropriate levels," the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.

"Similarly, all frontline workers must be scheduled for vaccination at least once before March 6, 2021 and immediately thereafter orgze mop-up rounds for them. The failure of potential beneficiaries to get vaccinated in the mop-up round would automatically push them to the age-appropriate vaccination category. The second dose of the vaccine is also scheduled to start from February 13, 2021 for people who were vaccinated on January 16, 2021," it added.

Rajesh Bhushan, Union Health Secretary, reviewed the status and progress of COVID vaccination with Health Secretaries and National Health Mission (NHM) managing Directors (MDs) of states and Union Territories (UTs), through video conference (VC) today. One of the largest such exercise globally, the countrywide COVID19 vaccination programme was launched three weeks back on January 16.

At the outset, the Union Health Secretary appreciated the creditworthy performance of all States and Union Territories (UTs) on COVID-19 vaccination. Elaborating on the global landmarks crossed by India, he underlined that India is the fastest country to reach the 5 million mark in COVID-19 vaccination in just 21 days. "Several other countries which have had a head start, some as much as 60 days, have taken a longer time to reach this target," he said.

The State Health Secretaries were asked to analyze the daily variation in the number of average vaccinations and take necessary steps to increase them. The States/UTs were advised to ensure 100 per cent saturation of people who have already been registered on CoWIN digital platform.

While there are 12 States/UTs that have achieved 60 per cent or more vaccination coverage of healthcare workers, they were all advised to improve the percentage coverage of vaccinated beneficiaries as there are many States and UTs that need to improve their performance on this parameter. States/ UTs were advised to ensure regular review meetings of the State, District and Block Task Force to assess the emerging challenges, understand the ground issues and promptly address them at the appropriate levels.

The Health Secretary reiterated the need for adequate attention to the issuance of provisional digital vaccination certificate after the first dose and final certificate after completing the second dose is required to be issued; the importance of authentication of beneficiaries and also timely data reconciliation on the CoWIN app.

He further stated that CoWIN 2.0 version will also be released soon. The feedback from the States and UTs were analysed and appropriate advice provided during the review meeting.

( With inputs from ANI )