BHUBANESWAR: A day after the nation-wide rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, Odisha government on Sunday decided to scale up the vaccination program across the State in order to complete the drive by January 25. The drive would be conducted across 380 session sites in the State with a target of inoculating 31,902 health care workers from Monday. The program was launched at 161 session sites on Saturday. Of the listed 16,405 HCWs, 13,980 were vaccinated on day one.
The Health and Family Welfare department has asked all medical colleges (government and private) to conduct at least five sessions per day in different locations and vaccinate 200 beneficiaries at each site from Monday.
The district headquarters hospitals (DHHs) and sub-divisional hospitals will conduct one to two sessions per day depending on the beneficiary load of the centre. The target, however, will be 100 per day for each session. It has also been planned to conduct one session per day at all community health centres (CHCs) and urban CHCs thrice a week with a target to vaccinate 100 healthcare workers (HCWs) during each session.
The decision to scale up the drive was taken after some districts failed to achieve the immunisation target on day one. While only seven districts could achieve 100 per cent (pc), the coverage in 12 districts was below the State average of 85 pc with only 54 pc turning up in Keonjhar.Additional Chief Secretary PK Mohapatra said the number of vaccination centres has been increased with a focus on proper distribution across the State as it is difficult to cover all HCWs with limited session sites.
“Two vaccinators and four vaccination officers will be deployed at each session site under medical colleges where sessions will be conducted on all working days. Though the DHHs and SDHs will also conduct their sessions on working days, the drive has been planned on Monday, Thursday and Saturday in CHCs and UCHCs,” he said.
The districts have been asked to prepare session micro-plan based on the vaccine availability and submit by 12 noon on Monday. Meanwhile, the State government has decided to propose the staff of six departments as frontline workers to be vaccinated during the next phase. Collectors and Municipal Commissioners have been directed to complete the enrollment process by January 25.
As decided by the State level Steering Committee, district sub-registrar and office staff, transport, civil supplies, excise, district welfare and information and public relations officials and their office staff besides the probationers and drivers, including both contractual and outsourced will be enrolled in the Co-WIN portal for vaccination.