On April 11, which was day one of Tika Utsav, Punjab administered just 69,129 doses. The number jumped to 94,719 on April 12, the highest in four days of the Tika Utsav. Then on day 3 (April 13), a total of 64,961 doses could be administered and on the last concluded day (April 14), a total of 75,137 doses were administered.
As the four-day Tika Utsav announced by PM Narendra Modi from April 11 to 14 concluded Wednesday, data showed that Punjab failed to achieve its daily vaccination target of 2 lakh doses even on a single day of the special drive.
In fact, the daily vaccination figure could not even cross the one-lakh mark on any of the four days.
It was on April 7 that CM Amarinder Singh had announced a target of administering 2 lakh vaccine doses in the state daily.
Later on April 10, he had urged the Centre to send more supplies claiming that the state was only left with just ‘five days of vaccine stock’ (5.7 lakh doses). Punjab had received additional 4 lakh vaccine doses after CM’s request for more supplies.
On April 11, which was day one of Tika Utsav, Punjab administered just 69,129 doses. The number jumped to 94,719 on April 12, the highest in four days of the Tika Utsav. Then on day 3 (April 13), a total of 64,961 doses could be administered and on the last concluded day (April 14), a total of 75,137 doses were administered.
In four days of Tika Utsav, Punjab administered total 3.03 lakh doses, including 2.83 lakh first doses and a little over 20,000 second doses, whereas according to the CM, the target was to administer 2 lakh doses each day.
This despite the fact that the State Health Department had constituted district-level teams for door-to-door vaccination and camps are also being held at ward-level by the councillors.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Dr Rajesh Bhaskar, nodal officer, Covid-19, Punjab, said that the state received fresh stock of 4 lakh vaccine doses after CM had urged Centre to send more supplies.
“We have enough vaccine stock now and there is no shortage. We could not achieve target of 2 lakh doses per day because there is a need to strategise the placement of mobile teams in a better way. Now, vaccine hesitancy among people is reducing, but our teams need to reach the areas where more beneficiaries could be found. We are working on placing our teams at better locations,” said Dr Bhaskar. He said that all efforts were made by Health Department to motivate people to get vaccinated during Tika Utsav but “numbers would improve with time”.
Overall till April 14 (Wednesday) since the beginning of vaccination drive in January this year, Punjab has administered a total of 20.83 lakh doses, including 19.08 first doses and 1.75 lakh second doses. While 4.63 lakh healthcare and frontline workers have been given first doses, 1.37 lakh of them have got their second dose.
A total of 14.44 lakh doses have been given to persons above 45 years of age, 37,566 in this category have got the second dose.
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