Maharashtra: 22 of 36 districts lag behind state’s average of full vaccination coverage

With all eyes on the new variant, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday asked officials to ramp up vaccination efforts.

A beneficiary gets a shot of a Covid-19 vaccine in Navi Mumbai. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty)

Even as experts insist on full vaccination at the earliest in the wake of the Omicron variant – 10 such cases have already been detected in Maharashtra while genome sequencing reports of over 60 suspected patients are awaited – 22 out of 36 districts in the state are still lagging behind in full vaccine coverage with inoculation rate much below the state’s average of 47.84%.

With all eyes on the new variant, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday asked officials to ramp up vaccination efforts. Although the state has administered over 12 crore vaccines, the second highest in India after Uttar Pradesh, 22 districts—mostly with high rural populations—are trailing behind in full vaccination.

As per the data provided by the public health department, Nanded has the lowest full vaccination coverage with only 29.18% of the eligible population having taken both the shots. This is followed by Hingoli (32.09%), Solapur (32.18%), Jalgaon (33.55%), Osmanabad (34.04%) and Jalna (34.26%).

On the other hand, in Mumbai, 76.19% of the population is fully immunised – the highest in Maharashtra. The state capital is followed by Pune with 65.63% population fully vaccinated, Bhandara (64.41%), Sindhudurg (62.23%) and Gondia (58.02%).

Talking to The Indian Express, Rajesh Tope, the state health minister, attributed the shortfall to the time gap of 84 days between the two doses of Covishield, and persisting hesitancy among people. “Earlier, in October, we had recorded 5 lakh daily vaccinations which has now increased to 8 lakh. We aim to increase it further as the state has the capacity to vaccinate nearly 20 lakh people daily,” he added.

On Wednesday, though, the state administered only 7.78 lakh doses.

The Indian Express reported on Monday that nearly 98 lakh people in the state have either missed or delayed their second vaccination.

To motivate people to get vaccinated, districts are also imposing coercive techniques, including issuing orders to stop food ration supply, threatening non-payment of salaries to government employees and prohibiting petrol pumps from selling fuel among others. Despite this, some districts still have a huge gap in the number of fully vaccinated people. Until December 4, nearly 2.1 lakh beneficiaries missed their due second vaccination in Nanded.

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Now, districts with a high rural population are starting mobile vans to reach far-off areas to vaccinate people. “We have created a list of beneficiaries who are partially vaccinated or unvaccinated. We are counselling them to encourage them to get fully vaccinated,” said Dr Bhimashankar, district health officer, Jalgaon.
In the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, 45% rise in Omicron cases in the last 12 hours was discussed. The variant has been reported in 54 countries. The volume of daily burden of Covid-19 cases has increased in France, Germany and Australia. The situation in the US is similar to the first wave.

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