Srinagar: The Government of India has asked Jammu and Kashmir administration to expedite the ongoing vaccination process in the newly carved Union Territory where nearly 18000 health workers have so far been vaccinated in 12 days.
Pertinently, a total of 1,12,893 health care workers in J&K are scheduled to be inoculated in the first phase of vaccination drive, which was launched by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 16 across the country.
Official sources said that over 18000 health workers across J&K have been vaccinated so far here while the Government of India has directed the administration here to speed up the pace of the process.
Earlier on January 25, Financial Commissioner Health and Medical Education, Atal Dulloo chaired a meeting of officers wherein he directed the officials to double the number of sites and also increase the target of daily inoculations to be achieved, asking them to achieve a target of at least 8000 inoculations in the next working day.
State Immunization Officer J&K, DrQazi Haroon told Precious Kashmir that the GoI has directed to increase the number of session sites in J&K to achieve the target in the shortest possible time.
“Earlier, we were told not to come up with a huge number of session sites. But, we have now been told to increase the session sites. With the increase in number of session sites, it is possible that nearly 10,000 health workers will be vaccinated in a single day,” he said.
“We are pushing to complete phase-I at earliest and hopefully, we will achieve the target of 1,12,893 health workers within two weeks,” he said.
He added that the people were in the beginning showing reluctance towards getting vaccinated, but now the change is visible on the ground as they are getting calls from different institutions regarding getting vaccinated.
“With the increase in the number of inoculations, the people will get more aware and wouldn’t hesitate in getting themselves vaccinated,” he said.
Notably, as on Monday, 2 million health care workers – who are first in the priority list— were vaccinated across the country.
Next in line are essential service staff such as sanitation workers, police and the armed forces, before the drive to vaccinate general public commences.
