1.65 Lakh People Inoculated on Day 1 of India's Covid Vaccination Drive

NEW DELHI, Jan 16: The Centre on Saturday said that as many as 1.65 lakh beneficiaries were inoculated on the first day of the vaccination drive at 3,351 session sites across the country and no case of post-vaccination hospitalisation was reported.

Addressing the press conference, Manohar Agnani, Additional Secretary of the Health Ministry said: "Of the 3,351 sessions held, 1,65,714 beneficiaries were vaccinated as per the provisional reports. A total of 16,755 personnel were involved in organising the immunization session sites. No case of post-vaccination hospitalisation reported so far."

The Additional Secretary said that the vaccination drive was successfully conducted on Day 1. A mammoth exercise was conducted almost a year after the first coronavirus case was detected in India, which then claimed over 1.5 lakh lives and infected one crore people.

"This will mark the beginning of the end of the pandemic."

According to the data presented at the press conference, Andhra Pradesh vaccinated 16,963 beneficiaries, highest so far, followed by 16,401 in Bihar, 15,975 in Uttar Pradesh, 16,727 in Madhya Pradesh, 12,637 in Karnataka.

The Central government had aimed to vaccinate over three lakh people on the first day.

Agnani also put forth the issues with the Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-WIN) application.

He said that there was delay in uploading of beneficiary list at some session sites, which was dealt by improving the system performance and speed. It is being further optimised.

Secondly, Healthcare workers were vaccinated though they were not scheduled for today's session. To tackle this a process has been evolved and states have been advised to upload details of such beneficiaries in Co-WIN database.

In Delhi, 3,403 people were innoculated on Day 1. (IANS)

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