CM launches Covid-19 vaccination in AP

Vijayawada: Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has launched the Covid-19 vaccination programme at government general hospital in Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh on Saturday.

The first dose of Covid-19 vaccine was administered to the safai karmacharini identified as B. Pushpa Kumari followed by a female nurse identified as Ch. Naga Jyothi in the presence of the Chief Minister.

Health principal secretary Anil Kumar Singhal and commissioner for health and family welfare K. Bhaskar explained about the vaccination programme being taken up all over the AP beginning from Jan 16 to 20.

The State health authorities have set up 332 session sites at primary health centers, community health centres, area hospitals, district hospitals, teaching hospitals and also at electronic urban health centres to administer vaccine to nearly 3.87 healthcare workers in phase-1. At each session site, 100 beneficiaries will be administered the vaccine per day from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm.

Based on preliminary reports, all the identified beneficiaries who registered for administration of vaccine on Co-WIN app are turning up at the session sites to undergo vaccination.

The State health authorities are initially administering the Covishield vaccine as AP received 4.77 lakh doses and once a beneficiary is administered Covishield vaccine he or she is supposed to be given the vaccine made by the same company after a gap of 28 days. Moreover, as AP received only 20,000 doses of Covaxin so far, the State health authorites have not yet started administering it until they receive another consignment of doses of such vaccine.

The State health authorities maintain that so far no reports of any side-effects of the vaccine manifested among those who got the first dose of the vaccine in the State.