Vaccination drive for 18-44 age group in 11 more Uttar Pradesh districts

LUCKNOW: The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to scale up the Covid-19 vaccination programme for the 18-44 age group.
“The vaccination for people above 18 years of age will now be conducted in all the 17 nagar nigams as well as Gautam Budh Nagar from next week,” said Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath here on Thursday.
The campaign began in seven districts on May 1.The criteria of selection included districts having more than 9,000 active cases namely -- Lucknow, Kanpur, Prayagraj, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Meerut, and Bareilly. The new additions will be Aligarh, Agra, Ghaziabad, Jhansi, Moradabad, Saharanpur, Firozabad, Mathura, Ayodhya, Shahjahanpur and Gautam Budh Nagar.
At a meeting to review the progress of the vaccination programme in the state convened by the CM, health officials revealed that vaccine wastage had been brought to 0.5% which is negligible in a way. Insiders revealed that the wastage was in fact incidental while flaws in planning and micro-planning had been eliminated. The officials also said that so far, 68, 536 persons in the age group of 18-44 have been vaccinated.
Later, health officials urged people to come forward to take Covid-19 vaccine as it was the other important pillar of Covid-19 containment besides prevention.
UP to get 1cr doses of vaccine next week: Health officials claimed that to ensure the availability of adequate doses of the vaccine in Uttar Pradesh, the state government has ordered to procure 50-50 lakh doses of Covishield and Covaxin each, from the manufacturing companies. Stating that the consignment was expected for delivery next week, officials assured that there was no dearth of the stocks even today. Earlier, the Yogi government had floated a short term global tender for 40 million doses of vaccines.