In a special COVID-19 vaccination drive, the Andhra Pradesh government inoculated as many as 11.796 lakh people, said a health official on Tuesday. The Andhra Pradesh Health Department carried out the special drive all through the 13 districts of the southern state on Monday until 11 pm.
Five districts vaccinated more than one lakh people, out of which East Godavari topped with 1.92 lakh inoculations. East Godavari is followed by Chittoor (1.18 lakh), Anantapur (1.1 lakh), West Godavari (1.08 lakh) and Visakhapatnam (1.07 lakh). All the other districts could manage only less than 1 lakh vaccinations. Guntur vaccinated 97,083 people, followed by Nellore (96,508), Krishna (94,162), Prakasam (87,226) and Kurnool (62,074). Kadapa district vaccinated only 41,894 people while Vizianagaram inoculated the least at 9,883.
On Monday, Andhra Pradesh logged 1,627 new COVID-19 cases, taking the state's overall tally beyond 19.5 lakh, even as its active caseload dropped to 21,748.
Speaking to TNM, Andhra Pradesh Health Commissioner Katamaneni Bhaskar said, “We've administered 11,96,886 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in a total of 2,228 vaccination centres (2,155 government and 73 private). The total number of vaccine doses administered has crossed 2 crore in the state. So far, 1.5 crore people have received the first dose. The number of people that are fully vaccinated with both the doses in Andhra Pradesh has crossed 50 lakh. Close to 10% of the population is now fully vaccinated.”
Grassroots governance system of village and ward volunteers are playing a key role in identifying unvaccinated people and inoculating them. The volunteer system has also undertaken multiple fever surveys across the state. Each volunteer is tasked with taking government services and schemes to 50 households.
Addressing a review meeting, Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy said, "Today, as we speak, the daily positivity rate is around 2.80%. This is drastically low when compared to the high rate at 25% that we earlier saw. Now, the positivity is substantially low thanks to everybody’s efforts."
"COVID-19 is something we will have to learn to live with and vaccination is the only solution. Vaccination is something that is not in our hands. Only what the state is allocated we are able to use," added CM Jagan.