HYDERABAD: As the mammoth task of vaccinating at least 1.30 crore to 1.40 crore people in rural Telangana lies ahead, district officials are mooting decentralisation of the vaccination programme to sub-centre level to ensure easy access for the villagers.
"While illiteracy and lack of awareness is one issue, with the agriculture season going on, many rural folks are reluctant to leave the work and head to PHCs, which are located far from where they live," said Dr Sainath Reddy, District Immunisation Officer, Nagarkurnool.
For instance, he said, in his district there are 177 sub-centres that are linked to 17 Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and decentralisation will ensure each sub-centre administers 150 vaccines per day. "At the sub-centre level, we can easily have the ANM’s mobilise one to two villages each day and inoculate more adults. We wish to take permission to adopt the method," he added.
The State has so far vaccinated 1.60 crore adult population with at least one dose of the vaccine. In some districts, however, the issue is still about fear of side effects.
"While the first dose vaccination was slow, the second dose administration is even slower making it tough to achieve good coverage. Many got fever after the first dose and are reluctant, and think that the second dose is an unnecessary hassle," said another official.
The districts majorly lagging behind in the vaccination drive include Vikarabad, Adilabad, Asifabad, Warangal Rural, Mulugu, Nagarkurnool and Narayanpet, all of which have less than 20 per cent population inoculated with at least one dose.
Meanwhile, in a few districts experiments have begun with small scale vaccination drives with a target of inoculating 500 persons in one place. "Initially the vaccine supply was very low but now with sufficient stocks we have been conducting drives with up to 500 doses and it is proving to be successful," added an official from Warangal Rural district.
336 COVID-19 cases, one death reported in Telangana
HYDERABAD: Telangana recorded 336 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday after conducting 76,481 tests. On the same day, the State recorded 306 recoveries. The number of active cases in the State now stand at 5,282. The day also saw one Covid death, taking the toll to 3,898.
Meanwhile, the highest number of cases were reported from the GHMC limits with 96 cases, followed by Rangareddy and Warnagla Urban with 24 cases each