J&K requisitions 10K Covid vaccine doses

SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir government has requisitioned 10,000 Covid vaccine shots to restart the third dose drive.

For the last 15 days, Jammu and Kashmir is witnessing a spike in Covid cases. The Union Territory reported 58 fresh covid-19 cases on Thursday. Of which, 23 cases were from Jammu and 35 from Kashmir. It has taken the overall tally to 479937. Among the cases, 174184 are from Jammu Division and 305753 from Kashmir Valley.

Amid the resurgence, the government has decided to restart the precautionary dose drive. “We have requisitioned 10,000 shots for the precautionary dose of 18 plus group. We submitted our request on March 17 when there was no spike. We had collected details from the districts and accordingly sought the doses,” Dr. Shahid Hussain, Extended Programme Immunization Officer (EPIO), told The Kashmir Monitor.

Scientists have been calling for ramping up the booster dose to keep new variants at bay. Officials said XBB 1.16, a new sub-lineage of the XBB variant of SARS-CoV-2 is behind the surge in India.

“We are fully geared up for the booster dose campaign. Whenever we receive the vaccines, we will start the drive. Our centers are ready. Our men and machinery are fully geared up for the drive,” said Dr. Shahid.

Jammu and Kashmir government has administered 24,582,649 vaccine doses till September 30 this year. Of these, 11,365,277 were the first, and 11,759,791 were the second dose. Around 1 1,457,581 precautionary doses have been administered till September 30

The government had launched a dynamic vaccination campaign. Besides increasing vaccination sites across 20 districts, the government launched a door-to-door drive.

Such was the success of the vaccination campaign, that the Bombay High Court asked the central government to learn from the door-to-door vaccination program of Jammu and Kashmir, and Kerala. Officials from other states were seeking advice from J&K health honchos to increase vaccination coverage in their respective places.

“We have achieved 100 percent saturation. We had started the process for the third dose as well, but people did not turn up as expected,” an official said.