Covid-19 vaccination drive gains pace in Karnataka

Photo Credits: Reuters

The Covid-19 vaccination drive has gained pace in the state of Karnataka in a period of over last 10 days with the state health minister D K Sudhakar iterating that the programme is as per the planned schedule with over 24 lakh doses jabbed in the capital city of Bengaluru alone.

According to the official data, the daily vaccination count has picked up from May 21, after the new priority list of the frontline workers was released having 22 more professions such as street vendors, prisoners, auto drivers, government transport personnel.

On May 21, the state witnessed a new record with 2.92 lakh doses administered, following  which an average of 1.88 lakh doses per day has been maintained in the last 10 days. Although, only 2.72 lakh people in the state have received both the doses of Covid-9 vaccine, as of Sunday, which is a relatively small number estimated at 4.1 percent given the population of the state to be over 5.5 crore.

The state has been getting constant supply of vaccine doses with 80,000 more doses of Covaxin and 2,17,310 doses of Covishield received on Saturday, the shortage still persists. Several people are vaccinated from the 6.5 lakh doses obtained from the manufacturers. Sudhakar highlighted the tech-savvy people from Bangalore were taking up the slots in other rural districts, taking away the chance of locals. “It is a problem we are aware of and trying to sort out.”

Sudhakar revealed the priority is on the highly susceptible people and the list of frontline workers released. He said, “The focus now is on institutionalised groups, as it is easier for us to gather all of them at one single place. While our resources are stretched to the maximum, we are also collaborating with NGOs to help us on the logistics front.”

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