Over 1 crore in state yet to take 2nd vaccine dose

Efforts are being made by contacting beneficiaries directly through call centres and home visits, Dr Pradeep Vyas, additional chief secretary of health Maharashtra, told The Indian Express. “Our district health teams are engaged in information, education and communication campaigns,” he said.

Dr Vyas, however, ruled out vaccine hesitancy and admitted that it was partly true that there was a rise in vaccination numbers as several countries have started reporting the Omicron variant of Covid-19. He added. “Covering 86 per cent of the targeted beneficiaries with the first dose and 52 per cent with the second dose in a large state with varying demography and geography is a very big achievement”.

According to the latest state Health Department report, Pune has the highest number of eligible people, 11 lakh, yet to get the second jab of Covishield vaccine. Another 77,000 are yet to take the second jab of Covaxin vaccine, stated a state Health Department report.

In Mumbai, there are 6.79 lakh beneficiaries who are yet to take the second dose of Covishield vaccine while over 62,000 have to take the second dose of Covaxin vaccine.

There are several other districts where a large number of people are yet to take the first dose of any vaccine against Covid-19.

Thane tops the list, where at least 13.83 lakh are yet to take the first shot of the vaccine, followed by Nashik (11.4 lakh), Jalgaon (8.56 lakh) Ahmednagar (8.45 lakh), Nanded (8.16 lakh), Solapur (7.65 lakh), Aurangabad (6.47 lakh) and others. There are at least 1.41 crore beneficiaries who are yet to get the first dose of the vaccine. Till December 13, there were 6,509 active cases of Covid-19 in Maharashtra, of which 59 per cent were hospitalised.

While the Covid positivity rate in the week till December 14 was 0.8 per cent, there are 10 districts whose weekly Covid positivity rate was higher than the state average. This includes Pune whose weekly Covid positivity rate is 1.6 per cent, Palghar, Ahmednagar, Buldhana, Jalna, Sindhudurg, Solapur, Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara.