Chandigarh, January 21: To accelerate the corona vaccination drive across the State, the Health Minister Mr Balbir Singh Sidhu on Thursday instructed the Civil Surgeons to extend the number of sites as well as beneficiaries.
While presiding over the Civil Surgeons Review meeting at the Punjab Bhawan, the Health Minister said that Captain Amarinder Singh led Punjab Government has already increased the vaccination sites from 59 to 134 to ensure maximum coverage of Govt. and Pvt. Healthcare providers. He said that the feature of " Allot Beneficiary " in an ongoing session has been added in the vaccinator module and its life.
He divulged that the feature has been added to facilitate maximum utilization of staff deployed at the session sites so that they can cater to the optimal number of beneficiaries (Healthcare Providers) per session.
He said that earlier, only such additional beneficiaries could be added whose names already existed in the database generated by CoWIN portal for a particular session but now there is a provision to add new beneficiaries at the sites as well for inclusion in the ongoing session.
Me Sidhu said that the State received 2.04 lakh doses of Covishield vaccine on 12.1.2021 and 1.96 lakh doses on 19.1.2021 while a total of 12,467 beneficiaries vaccinated so far.
Keep working properly on a routine vaccination program under which pregnant women and children are being vaccinated he said adding that departmental efforts should prevent the wastage of vaccines and it has to be minimized at all levels in the hospitals.
Instructing the Civil Surgeons to personally review the vaccination drive daily, Principal Secretary Mr Hussan Lal said that they have to hold the meeting with District Immunization Officers daily and also with the session site in-charges and the vaccine cold chain point in charge.
He said that as of today, the Punjab Government can conduct the 25,000-30,000 thousand RT-PCR tests in a day so that Civil Surgeons prefer the RT-PCR testing instead of Rapid Antigen Tests. He said that in case of any emergency and accident case, they have to firstly prefer the TruNaat tests then Rapid Antigen Test.
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Mr Hussan Lal clarified that if any eligible beneficiary failed to get his-self registered at CoWin portal, he/she can easily enroll for the free vaccination even now. He said that all drug warehouses have a sufficient stock of Corona Fateh Kits which has been proved a boon for the speedy recovery of covid positive patients.
He instructed the Civil Surgeons to deliver the Fateh kits to patients kept under home isolation without any delay and CS should personally cross-check the functioning of Covid Program then submit the report to the Head Quarter.