Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government has successfully completed administration of Covid-19 vaccine to 1.04 crore people since it began the drive on January 16. The health department administered 74.92 lakh first doses and 25.24 lakh second doses.
The officials maintain that AP has received 98 lakh doses of both Covishield
and Covaxin varieties from the Centre so far, while it procured some doses
on its own. The officials point out that states like Gujarat and Maharashtra
are getting nearly 25% of vaccine doses based on their population, while AP
is getting only 18%.
AP is facing a severe shortage of vaccine doses to administer to all targeted beneficiaries including healthcare workers, frontline workers, people aged above 45 years, those aged between 18-44 years and those aged above 60 years. There is a need to ramp up the supplies many times, say the officials.
Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy himself addressed letters to Prime
Minister Narendra Modi underlining the need to allocate more doses to AP and
extend other support in terms of medical oxygen and medical infrastructure.
The state health authorities maintain that as AP has established a good
network of ward/village volunteers, ANMs, Asha workers and health centres
with medical officers and paramedics, they are taking up fever survey
door-to-door to identify people showing symptoms of Covid. With such a vast
network, they are able to provide good care and can take up vaccination too in a big way if enough doses are provided. AP already achieved a distinct record of vaccinating nearly 6.2 lakh people on a single day, the pointed out.
AP Covid Helping Hands nodal officer Dr Arja Srikanth said, “We have completed administration of over one crore doses of Covid vaccine to our people in the state so far and one in seven people got the jab with at least one dose in the state.”
