Odisha intends to administer first COVID vaccine to all residents by year end

Dr. Bijay Panigrahi, the director of Family Welfare and Odisha's vaccine coordinator, said on Wednesday that the state has given out more than 3 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccination and plans to vaccinate all citizens with the first dose by the end of the year. He went on to say that 70% of the state's population had received the first dose and 27% had received the second.

Panigrahi said, "We have also fixed a target of 4 lakh vaccinations per day and on average we are doing more than 3 lakhs every day."

Currently, the state has roughly 17 lakh vaccines on hand, with a further 70 lakh doses set to arrive in the coming months. "As of now, 25 lakh people have missed the second dose. We have prepared the list of those who are left with the second dose and instructed district authorities to facilitate those so that they are vaccinated at the earliest," he added.

COVID vaccination in India

In terms of COVID-19 vaccination, India has completed the world's largest inoculation programme, administering 87,66,63,490 crores worth of vaccines. 54,13,332 of these were given out in the last 24 hours. On Tuesday, India completed the distribution of both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to over 25% of the estimated adult population, more than eight months after commencing the drive.

According to early figures, more than 53 lakh immunisation doses were administered on Tuesday, raising the total to 87.59 crores. With Tuesday's immunisations, an estimated 68% of the adult population has received their first dose, and 24.61% has had all of their shots. According to reports, India has given 876.2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to 642.5 million people as of Tuesday evening, ranking second only to China (1.1 billion people vaccinated) in terms of the number of people who had gotten at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

The fact that nearly a quarter of the adult population is fully vaccinated has major public-health implications, said reports. Reports show that following the second dosage, the vaccine's effectiveness in preventing death improves, providing near-total protection (97.5%) against severity and mortality.

(with inputs from ANI)

Image: PTI/ANI