To accelerate the corona vaccination drive across the State, Punjab Health and Family Welfare Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu on Thursday instructed all the civil surgeons to extend the number of sites as well as beneficiaries.
“Punjab Government has already increased the vaccination sites from 59 to 134 so as to ensure maximum coverage of Government and private healthcare providers,” said Sidhu while presiding over the Civil Surgeons Review meeting at the Punjab Bhawan.
He said that the feature of ‘Allot Beneficiary’ in an ongoing session has been added in the vaccinator module and is live. “The feature has been added to facilitate maximum utilization of staff deployed at the session sites so that they can cater to the optimal number of beneficiaries (healthcare providers) per session,” he said.
He added that earlier, only such additional beneficiaries could be added whose names already existed in the database generated by CoWIN portal for a particular session, “but now, there is a provision to add new beneficiaries at the sites as well for inclusion in ongoing session”. Sidhu said that the State received 2.04 lakh doses of Covishiled vaccine on January 12, 2021, and 1.96 lakh doses on January 19, 2021, while a total of 12,467 beneficiaries vaccinated so far.
“Keep working properly on a routine vaccination program under which pregnant women and children are being vaccinated,” he said adding that departmental efforts should prevent the wastage of vaccines and it has to be minimized at all levels in the hospitals.
Instructing the Civil Surgeons to personally review the vaccination drive daily, the state Principal Secretary Hussan Lal said that they have to hold the meeting with District Immunization Officers daily and also with the session site in-charges and the vaccine cold chain point in-charges.
Lal said that as of today, the Punjab Government has capacity to conduct the 25,000-30,000 RT-PCR tests in a day so that Civil Surgeons prefer the RT-PCR testing instead of Rapid Antigen Tests. “In case of any emergency and accident case, they have to firstly prefer the TruNaat tests then Rapid Antigen Test,” he said.
He clarified that if any eligible beneficiary failed to get himself registered at CoWin portal, he or she can easily enroll for the free vaccination even now. All drug warehouses have a sufficient stock of Corona Fateh Kits which has proved a boon for the speedy recovery of COVID positive patients, he added.
At the same time, he instructed the Civil Surgeons to deliver the Fateh kits to patients kept under the home isolation without any delay and the Civil Surgeons should personally cross-check the functioning of COVID Program and then submit the report to the headquarter.
Covid vaccination drive gains momentum in Mohali
Overcoming the initial hesitation and qualms, the COVID-19 vaccination is now gaining momentum in Mohali district. Mohali Additional Deputy Commissioner (General) Aashika Jain said that on Thursday (January 21), the district health officials organized vaccination at 14 session sites which is the highest in the State followed by Ludhiana second with 11 and Roopnagar third with 10 sessions while no other district in the State has reached double digit mark for the number of sessions conducted.
“By administering as many as 616 jabs in a day, Mohali district has vaccinated the second highest number of pre-registered healthcare workers (HCWs) being closely at heels to Ludhiana where 673 HCWs were vaccinated. Pertinently, no other district in the state touched 500-mark in vaccine administration,” she said.
Jain said that no side effect of the vaccine has been reported from any of the beneficiaries till date in the district which has been a motivation for others to come up.
55 percent turn up for vaccine in Chandigarh on the third day of drive
Around 55 percent of healthcare workers against the registered beneficiaries turned up for the COVID-19 vaccination in the union territory of Chandigarh on the third day of vaccination drive on Thursday. A total of 284 health care workers were given doses of vaccination on Thursday against the target of 510 beneficiaries at sessions held at six sites in the city. No adverse event following immunization was reported, said an official spokesman.
The spokesman said that a total of 90 beneficiaries against the target of 100 received the dose of vaccination at GMSH-16, 27 HCWs against the target of 100 at CH-Sector 45, 46 HCWs against the target of 100 at GMCH-32 site one, 40 against the target of 100 at GMCH-32 site two, 10 against the target of 10 in Airforce Station and 71 against the target of 100 at PGIMER. Till now, 862 healthcare workers (HCWs) have been inoculated in Chandigarh since the launch of vaccination drive for COVID-19 on January 16.
On the day of the launch of vaccination, 374 health workers had received their first dose of vaccination. On the second day of vaccination drive, 204 health care workers were inoculated in the city.
Meanwhile, one more person succumbed to COVID-19 as 16 fresh positive cases were detected in Chandigarh on Thursday. The COVID-19 related fatality was reported after six days in the city. With this, the death toll has reached 331 in the city, as per the Chandigarh Health Department’s evening bulletin.
The case tally of total infections stood at 20639 in the city. 204305 samples have so far been tested in the city. A total of 1006 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours.
