AP to take Covid-19 vaccination to doorstep of people

Vijayawada: As part of an effort to take the Covid-19 vaccination direct to homes, the Andhra Pradesh government has carried out a vaccination programme at four select village secretariats covering nearly 1,400 people in Krishna and Guntur districts recently.

The health department intends to reach the vaccination programme to all village/ward secretariats soon in addition to providing vaccine at primary healthcare centres.

On Saturday, it held the programme at village secretariats at Solasa and Kaza villages in Guntur district and Chillakallu and Chandragudem in Krishna district. Officials roped in health workers to go to the targeted villages in advance and ask people aged 45 to 59 years with comorbidities and those aged 60 years and above to visit the village secretariats to undergo the vaccination.

Accordingly, nearly 1,400 people underwent vaccination successfully.

Based on the successful implementation of the programme at four village secretariats as a pilot project, the state health authorities aim to expand this to ward/village secretariats all over the state.

Meanwhile, the regular vaccinations at primary health care centres will continue.

Health officials maintain that the state government is viewing the surge in coronavirus very seriously and coming up with a series of plans to carry out tests involving more number of people and provide vaccination to all the targeted people.

Accordingly, the officials aim to do the RTPCR test on 3,000 people from general categories and 1,020 persons from 20 targeted groups like students, teachers, those working in malls and at other public places village/ Mandal/urban local body-wise per day.

District health officials are directed to complete the RTPCR test for all the collected swab samples from the targeted groups expeditiously and release the Covid-19 test result. Officials say that a delay in giving the Covid-19 test result will result in the spread of the infection as those who gave their swab samples will be under the assumption that they are negative and might move freely around.

They are also of the opinion that the delay in the testing of the swab samples could result in a sudden surge in the number of cases if test results of two to four days are released at the same time.

Director of health Dr T. Geetha Prasadini said, “We have conducted the vaccination programme at four village secretariats as part of doorstep programme, as a pilot project. The government intends to spread the programme to all over the state.