New Delhi: Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Saturday reviewed the status of coronavirus vaccination with Health Secretaries of States and UTs through video conference.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched countrywide coronavirus vaccination programme on January 16. This is one of the largest such exercise globally.
Elaborating on the global landmarks crossed by India, Bhushan underlined that India is the fastest country to reach the 5 million mark in COVID19 vaccination in just 21 days.
Union Health Secretary urged the States and UTs to exponentially increase the pace of vaccination. States and UTs were asked to improve the momentum and accelerate the coverage as the country moves forward with the COVID vaccination drive.
While there are 12 States/UTs that have achieved 60% or more vaccination coverage of healthcare workers, 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.
Every State/UT must schedule all healthcare workers for vaccination at least once before February 20 and immediately thereafter organize mop-up rounds for them. Similarly, all frontline workers must be scheduled for vaccination at least once before 6th March 2021 and immediately thereafter organize mop-up rounds for them.
The Health Secretary reiterated need for adequate attention to issuance of provisional digital vaccination certificate after the first dose and final certificate after completing the second dose is required to be issued.
