New Delhi: Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Saturday reviewed the status of COVID-19 Vaccination with Health Secretaries of States and UTs.
The review meeting was conducted through a video conference. Bhushan lauded the exceptional and creditworthy performance of all States and UTs on COVID-19 Vaccination. The Union Health Secretary highlighted the following issues that need attention of the States/UTs to improve and accelerate the coverage as the country moves forward with the vaccination drive.
While some States and UTs have over 50% coverage, they were all advised to improve the percentage coverage of vaccinated beneficiaries as there are many States and UTs that need to improve their performance on this parameter.
Bhushan pointed out that COVID-19 vaccine is available in sufficient quantity and technical glitches on CoWIN have now been resolved. States/UTs were advised to ensure that regular review meetings of the State, District and Block Task Force were held to assess the emerging challenges, understand the ground issues and promptly address them at the appropriate levels.
During the review meeting it was pointed that there is a huge scope for improvement in the number of average vaccinations per session. The State Health Secretaries were asked to analyze the daily variation in the number of average vaccination and take the necessary steps to increase them.
Drawing attention to the recent letter of the Health Ministry, the Union Health Secretary pointed out that a provisional digital vaccination certificate after the first dose and final certificate after completing the second dose is required to be issued. States/UTs were asked to take the necessary steps to ensure that the vaccination certificates are issued to all vaccinated beneficiaries before they exit the session.
He highlighted that CoWIN software interface provides for authentication of beneficiaries through use of Aadhaar, and urged States and UTs that the vaccinators should be sensitized to do proper authentication of beneficiaries. The compliance should be strictly monitored at the District level and State level in the District Task Force and State Task Force meetings.
