Visakhapatnam Collector calls for speeding up vaccination programme

District Collector V Vinay Chand asked all the medical officers in the Visakhapatnam district to expedite the vaccination process. On Monday, the Collector in a meeting discussed with the paramedics on vaccination, isolation kits, Covid cases, Arogyasree implementation in hospitals, and other issues.

Addressing the nation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday announced a centralized vaccine policy to be implemented in the next two weeks. It is said that with the increase in vaccine supply in the country, from June 21, all the citizens above 18 years of age can get free vaccines. The Centre will buy 75 percent of the vaccine supply and provide free Vaccination. As of June 7, a total of 10,50,663 individuals got vaccinated. These include 2,14,786 individuals above 60 years, 3,96,641 between 45-60 and 2,10,559 between 18-44 years of age.

Apart from amping up the vaccination process in Visakhapatnam, the Collector told the District Health Officer (DM&HO), Suryanarayana to conduct 10,000 Covid tests in a day and send test samples within 24 hours to the lab. Officials were told to identify zones that have more than 20 percent positive cases. Also, the number of Covid cases reported at private hospitals was reported to the district officials every day. Collector told that strict action should be taken against hospitals that do not follow the rules of Arogyasree for Covid -19 treatment.

Meanwhile, a total of 13 children who lost their parents during Covid-19 were handed over exgratia. It was announced by the state government that an exgratia of Rs 10 lakh will be given for those children. On Monday, District Collector V Vinay Chand said  Rs 1 Crore 30 lakh has been deposited to 13 children each of Rs 10 lakh respectively. The money has been deposited in their accounts.  The amount will be given to the children after they turn  25 years old.

On the other hand, district and health officials are taking prudent steps of vaccinating all the mothers with children of age five years or less. Health, Medical, and Family Welfare Principal Secretary, Anil Kumar Singhal, in a meeting said that all mothers falling under the aforementioned category will be vaccinated on priority. It is also said that they will be allowed to get vaccinated alongside people in the age group above 45 for whom the vaccine is currently available in the State. It is learned that there are about 15 lakh mothers in the above category to get vaccinated.

These precautionary measures of vaccination of mothers in all the districts in the state including Visakhapatnam are taken in view of the possible third wave of COVID – 19, and its impact on children. All the District Medical and Health Officers were given instructions to vaccinate all the mothers having children below 5 years. The said officials were given guidelines and a structure, on how to prepare for vaccinating those eligible mothers. Medical officers were told to prepare a list of mothers having children with age less than 5 years village wise, issue tokens in advance to all the eligible mothers a day before the day of vaccination based on the vaccine availability. Auxiliary Nurse Midwife’s (ANM) and Accredited Social Health Activist’s (ASHA) workers were told to mobilize the beneficiaries to their allotted center as per the time and date mentioned in the token duly following COVID-19 protocols. In accordance with the regulations, some of the private hospitals were also given permission for vaccinating mothers.