Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Arun Kumar Singh has written to the deputy commissioners of all the 24 districts in the state and set fresh daily vaccination targets for ensuring at least 95 per cent coverage of the first dose of vaccine by December 25.
In a letter addressed to the DCs on Monday, Singh asked them to expedite the vaccination process under the door-to-door vaccination campaign, and organise special camps for Covid-19 vaccination on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in all the districts.
“All the districts are requested to speed up vaccination and try to achieve fresh targets provided by the health department,” Singh wrote in his letter.
The fresh vaccination target set for the state is 3.50 lakh doses every day in the remaining days of November and over 4 lakh jabs daily from December 1 to December 20.
In order to achieve this target, the state will have to administer the first jab of Covid-19 vaccine to 2.86 lakh beneficiaries daily and the second jab to 1.18 lakh beneficiaries every day in December, a document attached to Singh’s letter highlighted. In November, the state has to administer the first dose of vaccine to 2.47 lakh residents and second dose to 1.02 lakh beneficiaries every day in order to achieve this target.
According to the letter addressed to the DCs, Jharkhand has administered the first dose of vaccine to 66.07 per cent of beneficiaries, while the second dose has been administered to 28.43 per cent of beneficiaries.
“Our performance is still lower than the national average of 76 per cent coverage of the first dose and 32 per cent coverage of the second dose,” the letter read.
In mid-October, Singh, in a letter to all the concerned officials in Jharkhand, stated that the state has set a target of administering at least 3 lakh Covid-19 vaccines daily. However, Jharkhand failed to achieve even 50 per cent of the daily vaccination target in the second half of October and the first 22 days of November. As per government data, on an average about 1 lakh residents were vaccinated every day in the state from mid-October to November 22.
Officials spearheading the immunisation drive said that festivals coupled with the wedding season resulted in poor vaccination figures in the state. As per government records, Jharkhand has so far administered the first dose of vaccine against Covid-19 to over 1.60 crore beneficiaries and the second dose to 70-lakh-odd residents.
