CHANDIGARH: At a time when Punjab’s neighbouring states in the region are pushing hard to increase their Covid-19 vaccine cover to fend off the projected third wave, the state is still playing catch up.
Top health experts of the country, including New Delhi AIIMS chief Randeep Guleria have been warning about the “inevitable” third wave of infection that could hit the country in two to three months and have pushed for increasing the vaccination cover.
Despite geographical constraints, the hill state of Himachal Pradesh has so far managed to fully vaccinate 6.4% of its population, nearly double the national average of 3.8% and 36.1% people have received the first dose.
Haryana has fully vaccinated 4.1% of its population and has administered the first dose to 23% people.
Punjab has fully vaccinated only 2.9% people so far.
The state ran a special drive on the International Yoga Day and inoculated 5,15,276 beneficiaries, the fifth highest in the country.
Punjab, on the other hand, featured on the list of states that did not cross even one lakh vaccinations on the day when a record 85.96 lakh vaccine doses were administered across the country.
The state has fully vaccinated only 2.9% people, fourth lowest among states reporting more than five lakh confirmed cases of Covid-19.
Only Bihar (1.7%), Uttar Pradesh (1.8 %) and Madhya Pradesh (2.6%) are lagging behind Punjab.
The state has partially vaccinated 18.2% of its population.
Since the launch of the vaccination drive on January 16, Punjab was slow to get off the block with only 55,387 people getting vaccinated in January.
Thereafter, the state witnessed its highest number of vaccinations in April when 2,438,366 got inoculated.
The numbers dropped to 1,573,315 in May and in the ongoing month 1,291,047 have been inoculated till June 21.
Punjab has not been able to achieve its own daily vaccination targets, which are set district-wise by the health department and vary according to the vaccines available.
With 94,996 people getting vaccinated out of the average target of 228,571, only 41% target was achieved on June 21 with only five districts achieving over 50%.
So far, Ludhiana tops the list by administering 1,029,272 doses, followed by Jalandhar 6,70,887 and Mohali 538,350.
Health minister Balbir Singh Sidhu maintained that the pace of vaccination has picked pace in the state despite the ongoing paddy sowing season.
Efforts are being made to accelerate it and special vaccination drives will be launched from next week, he added.
The daily average vaccination between June 7 to June 21 has crossed 70,000 which was recorded at 41,668 during the previous 15-day period between May 23 and June 6.
Punjab was earlier facing a shortage of vaccine hampering the immunisation drive.
The drive on a couple of occasions had to be halted due Centre’s inability to replenish the stock in time.
However, the availability of doses has improved in the recent weeks.
As of June 21, of 4,976,290 shots of Covishield allocated by the Government of India, 4,729,110 were utilised and 517,240 of 598,060 doses of Covaxin have been administered.
Out of 1,005,030 shots of Covishield procured by the Punjab government, 715,470 have been used and 121,020 of 227,310 Covaxin doses consumed.
With the fast-spreading highly infectious Delta variant (B.1.6.17) of Covid-19 becoming the most dominating variant of concern, the experts have been laying stress on increasing the pace and coverage of vaccine.
The chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh last week directed the expert group headed by Dr Gagandeep Kang to studying the effectiveness of vaccines on new variants of the coronavirus.
There have been studies suggesting that two doses of vaccines are effective in reducing the risk of hospitalisation from the Delta variant that fuelled the second wave of infection in Punjab.