GUWAHATI: In sync with the Centre’s move to ramp up the vaccination drive with one crore inoculation everyday, the Assam health department has readied 2,000 teams of doctors and health staff to accelerate daily vaccination up to four lakh.
State health minister Keshab Mahanta said this after reviewing the Covid scenario in the state capital here on Saturday.
“Like PM Modi’s plan to administer one crore doses per day in the country, we have completed all preparations to vaccinate three lakh people everyday.
In fact, we are in a position to vaccinate four lakh beneficiaries daily with 2,000 vaccination teams that have been constituted,” Mahanta said.
Covid-19 daily figures were the highest in Guwahati at the peak of the second wave in May, but the disease later spread faster in other districts.
Even as the positivity rate in the city has declined to around three percent in the last one week, it still remains higher than the state positivity rate of 2.14% recorded on Saturday.
“The Covid situation is much better in Guwahati now and in a state from where the virus spread can be controlled.
Hopefully, we will be able to ease the restrictions in Guwahati soon if the improvement continues,” he added.
The minister informed that special monitoring has been put in place in the city for contact tracing.
After testing 74,827 people, who came in touch with positive patients, 8,183 Covid cases were detected in Guwahati, the district administration said.
Mahanta reiterated that out of the total adult population estimated to be 10 lakh in Guwahati, over 6 lakh people have already been inoculated.
“In the next two days, we will probably cross the seven lakh target in Guwahati through a special drive,” he said.
In railway stations and airports, the number of positive cases has dropped, but the minister said, Covid screening of passengers will continue for a long time.
Significantly, only one positive case was detected in Guwahati airport on Friday.
Kamrup (Metropolitan) deputy commissioner Biswajit Pegu informed that between April 1 and June 11, over 6.38 lakh people of the district were tested and 51,883 tested positive.
The number of active cases has reduced to 2,815 as of Saturday.
During this period, 748 people died of Covid in the urban district.
As the Assam government is likely to withdraw the Covid restrictions district-wise from June 15, the decline in the positivity rate and improvement in recovery rate to 89.38% this weekend was heartening for health officials.
The number of active cases in the state has further dropped to 43,298 after 5,600 patients were discharged in the last 24 hours.
But the number of fatalities increased to 42 from Friday’s 29 Covid deaths.
A total of 3,463 new cases were detected in the state on Saturday while carrying out 1.61 lakh tests.