VIJAYAWADA: For the first time since Tika Utsav began, the state health officials administered Covid-19 vaccine jabs to almost four lakh beneficiaries in a day, on Wednesday. The first two days of the drive saw just one lakh people getting immunised against the novel coronavirus due to short supply of the doses.
When the drive kicked off on Sunday, the state had less than one lakh doses. As all of them were used on the first day itself, vaccination centres across the state had to set up ‘No Stock’ boards the next day.
With the arrival of nearly 6.4 lakh doses in two spells—on Monday night and the next morning, the state medical and health department expedited the vaccination drive on Wednesday. Vaccination was not taken up on Tuesday on account of Ugadi even as the new arrivals were dispatched to all the districts.
On Wednesday, the scenario was different as the officials equipped the centres with sufficient doses amid a large turnout of the beneficiaries. By 4 pm, 3.97 lakh beneficiaries were given the vaccine shots with the highest of 46,000-odd in Chittoor district followed by over 43,000 in Krishna. Several districts reached 100 per cent target. The drive was carried out in 1,400 session sites across the state.
The health officials are planning on using the remaining two lakh doses on Thursday itself.Meanwhile, with the continuous spike in infections Remdesvir stock in the state is also fast depleting.
While the availability of the injections were around 84,000 on Monday, the same came down to under 58,000 by Wednesday evening.The state, however, is comfortable with respect to the availability of beds in hospitals as a majority of the infectees are being suggested home isolation during the course of their treatment.