Odisha launches campaign to boost COVID-19 vaccination

With a large portion of the population yet to get inoculated in Odisha, the state government Tuesday launched a campaign to motivate people to come forward for full COVID-19 vaccination of two doses, a health department official said.

The drive - ‘Har Ghar Dastak’- aims at tracing non-vaccinated people with the help of ASHA and Anganwadi workers, who will conduct door-to-door visits in villages and prepare a list.

The campaign will continue for a month, said Director of Family Welfare Bijay Panigrahi, who is also the state’s nodal officer for immunisation.

”Over 30 lakh people have not taken the second dose of Covid vaccine in Odisha. The first dose target will be complete by December. More vaccination centres will be set up in villages,” he said.

So far, 3,74,63,734 vaccine doses have been administered in the state, officials said.

Meanwhile, Odisha on Tuesday registered 327 fresh infections, including 44 children and adolescents in the age group of 0-18 years, pushing the caseload to 10,42,100.

It had reported 316 new cases on Monday.

Khurda district, comprising state capital Bhubaneswar, logged the highest number of 177 cases, followed by Cuttack (29).

Twelve of the 30 districts did not report any new COVID-19 case in the last 24 hours, the health department official said.

The state’s coronavirus death toll mounted to 8,340 after four more patients, one each from Balasore, Jagatsinghour, Khurda and Puri, succumbed to the virus.

Odisha now has 4,122 active cases, while 10,29,585 patients, including 438 since Monday, have recovered from the highly infectious disease.

The positivity rate stands at 4.71 per cent, he added.