With target of 48 lakh children, Madhya Pradesh sets out to complete vaccination of 10 lakh children on first day

Madhya Pradesh on Monday kickstarted vaccination for its total population of 48 lakh children between 15 and 18 years of age with a good turnout across 8,600 vaccination sites set up at government and private schools across the state.

The state has set out to complete vaccination of 10-12 lakh children on the first day of the vaccination programme. Of this, around 1.2 lakh students are targetted to be vaccinated in Bhopal alone on Monday. In smaller districts like Agar-Malwa, a target of vaccinating 10,000 students was set for the first day and by 1 pm, 4,000 children were already vaccinated.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan inaugurated the vaccination program at Shubah School of Excellence at Bhopal where he urged the youngsters to not only vaccinate themselves without any delay but also motivate the unvaccinated people around them to come forward and immunise themselves. Addressing the crowd gathered at the school, Chouhan said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started the vaccination drive. It is our target to complete the vaccination of children in the age group of 15 to 18 years by December 20. Vaccinate your children and be safe. Your vaccination it our goal.”

Ritika Verma, a class 10 student at Modern School in Sehore district was among the first to reach the school for vaccination. Ritika learnt of the vaccination drive for students on the school’s Whatsapp group and walked 3 kilometres from her house to school with her friend. Speaking to The Indian Express, Ritika said, “I read on the Whatsapp group made for online studies that students will be vaccinated today and so I went there as it’s our responsibility to get vaccinated. There were not many who turned up at school today maybe because they thought they will come on the day of their class as classes are being held only trice a week. I also called up my friends and asked them to get themselves vaccinated.”

While all government schools started the vaccination programme on Monday, some private schools began collecting data of students including their Aadhar Card details with their vaccination scheduled for Tuesday. Khushkeerat Duggal, a class 12 student of St Joseph High School in Bhopal said, “Our details were collected today including consent of parents amongst other details like Aadhar card. But the date when the doses will be administered has not yet been intimated.”

State Immunisation Officer, Santosh Shukla said, “We have adequate number of doses of Covaxin and all the schools staff has been trained. The vaccination program is going on smoothly without any hiccups as our health staff has successfully administered over 10 crore doses.”

However, minor glitches were faced by at schools. A teacher at a government school in Sehore’s Modern School pointed out that teachers set out to collect names, class and Aadhar number details including cell phone number and providing them to a computer operator designated by the health department to upload information, but several numbers turned out to be wrong. In some other cases, the parents were not giving the OTP numbers generated in time for vaccination. In that case, vaccinations were carried out without OTP generation.