Amid 3rd wave warning, UP to intensify Covid vaccinations

Virendra Singh Rawat

Lucknow / May 7, 2021

Amid a stiff second wave and early warnings of an impending third wave of Covid-19, the Uttar Pradesh government has decided to intensify the ongoing vaccination programme.

In UP, about 10.5 million people have been administered more than 13.2 million first and second doses of Covishield and Covaxin shots so far.

UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath has directed health officials to expand the ambit of the vaccination, especially in the 18-45 years age bracket. An estimated 90 million people will be inoculated for free in this category in the state.

From next week, the government will start the vaccinations for this largely youth category in all the state municipal corporations, including Noida. Later, it would cover all the remaining districts/towns in UP.

Currently, the vaccination in the 18-45 years bracket is underway in only 7 worst affected districts, including Lucknow, Kanpur City, Prayagraj (Allahabad), Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Meerut and Bareilly. Since May 1, when the vaccination drive for this category took off pan India, nearly 70,000 beneficiaries have been inoculated in UP.

The state has already set up about 2,500 vaccination centres across 75 districts for all the targetted vaccination categories.

Meanwhile, Yogi stressed upon the need to further cut wastage of Covid vaccines to maximise the benefit matrix. At present, the vaccine wastage ratio is quite low in UP at 0.39 per cent, which the state is looking to bring down to 0 per cent.

On Wednesday, the UP government had floated a global tender for procuring 40 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine.

This was in addition to the order of 10 million doses, 5 million each to Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute of India (SII) for Covaxin and Covishield respectively, which was placed by the Yogi government last month.

The short term global tender has been floated by state agency UP Medical Supply Corporation Limited (UPMSCL). According to the e-tender notice, the interested companies could submit bids from May 7 to 21, while the tendering process would be governed as per the central government guidelines.

The Centre has allowed the states for procuring vaccines from global pharmaceutical companies, including Moderna, Sputnik and AstraZeneca.