UP: Day 2 of vaccination today, govt aims to inoculate 1.5L people

“The second round of vaccination is starting tomorrow (Friday)… From next week, we will start vaccination two consecutive days a week – on Thursdays and Fridays. All the preparations for it are complete. For tomorrow, around 1,400-1,500 vaccination booths have been set up in the state. The site allocation through CoWin portal and the preparation of the beneficiaries’ list is going on. We have completed the details for 1,200 sessions and the rest would be completed by the end of the day. Estimating that 100 people will be vaccinated in a booth, we will be administering the first dose of the vaccine to around 1.4 lakh to 1.5 lakh health workers tomorrow,” Principal Secretary (Health) Alok Kumar told mediapersons on Thursday.

On the first day of the vaccination on January 16, a total of 22,643 doctors and healthcare workers – 71 per cent of 31,700 listed – got the first dose of their vaccines – wither Serum Institute of India’s Covidshield vaccine or Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.

As per an estimate, around 9 lakh healthcare workers in the state will be vaccinated in the first phase as per the central government’s guidelines.

Initially, the UP government had planned to vaccinate the 9 lakh health workers in just first three days, but now the authorities say that it could take some more time.

Meanwhile, health officials confirmed that the state has received an additional 9.11 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccine, taking the total number of doses available to the state to around 20 lakh.

“We already had 10.75 lakh doses of vaccine with us and the second instalment of 9.11 lakh doses reached our divisional stores by Wednesday night. In total, we have now around 19.86 lakh doses with us. The number of healthcare workers we have estimated in the state is between 8.55 lakh and 9 lakh, and if we consider two doses each person, the requirement would be around 18 lakh doses. Therefore, we have enough vaccine for healthcare workers,” the Principal Secretary (Health) said.

According to him, those who could not get their vaccine on the first day — roughly 9,000 healthcare workers — will have the opportunity to get vaccinated on Friday.