NEW DELHI: Even as vaccination against Covid-19 started slowly in the first phase of the national programme – initially marred by vaccine hesitancy – nine states have now inoculated over 90% of registered healthcare workers with the first dose.
States such as Jharkhand, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat and the UT of Ladakh have achieved 100% coverage of healthcare workers for the first dose, the government said, underlining that even states like Tamil Nadu, where vaccine hesitancy was initially an issue, are now among better performers.
Nine states and UTs including Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have also vaccinated over 75% of its healthcare workers who were due for second dose.
Besides, nine states and UTs have achieved more than 70% vaccination coverage of registered front-line workers with the first dose of the vaccines.
Overall, India administered over 1.54 crore doses of the Covid vaccines till 7pm on Tuesday since January 16. These included over 67.32 lakh health and over 55.47 lakh frontline workers who received the first dose and over 26.85 lakh health and 828 frontline workers who have got the second shot. Since the launch of the second phase of the drive on March 1, which the coverage expanded to a larger “priority” population group, over 4.34 lakh people more than 60 and 60,020 people aged 45-60 with specific co-morbidities have also received the vaccine till 7pm on Tuesday.
The health ministry said 5 crore doses and 46 lakh vials of vaccine had so far been moved around the country.