Covid Vaccination: Stop a New Registry of Healthcare Workers, Government Tells States | India News


NEW DELHI: In a move to prevent fraudulent entries for Covid vaccination by those who are not eligible, the Center has decided to stop any new registration of frontline and healthcare workers.
However, healthcare and frontline workers who have already registered will receive their vaccine. In addition, registration of individuals, including healthcare and frontline workers, aged 45 and over will continue to be allowed.
The decision to stop a new registry of healthcare and frontline workers comes in the wake of complaints received by the Ministry of Health about ineligible beneficiaries falsifying their identities as healthcare and frontline workers to register for vaccination. .
Despite state governments pre-filling in data for healthcare and frontline workers, who were prioritized for Covid vaccination in the first round itself, there has been a 24% increase in the database of health workers. health workers in recent days, said health secretary Rajesh Bhushan in a letter to the states on Saturday.
“Various contributions have been received from different sources that in some of the CVCs, some ineligible beneficiaries are being registered as TS and PDA and are being vaccinated in total violation of prescribed guidelines,” Bhushan said in the letter, asking the states to stop registration of TS and PDA with immediate effect.
The government started the Covid vaccination campaign on January 16 with healthcare workers and then soon expanded it to cover frontline workers as well. Vaccination is now open to everyone over the age of 45.
So far 89.53 lakhs of healthcare workers and 96.19 lakhs of frontline workers have received the first dose of the vaccine, while 53.06 lakhs of healthcare workers and 40.18 lakhs of frontline workers have also received been fully vaccinated with the second dose.
In total, doses of 7.44 crore have been administered so far. This includes 4.57 crore from the first dose of vaccines given to people over 45 years of age.
“All efforts have been made in close collaboration with the states / UT to saturate the vaccination of healthcare workers and PDAs. While progress is being tracked, the schedule for completing the vaccination of all healthcare workers and PDAs with the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine has been extended several times and has elapsed since these schedules and even after starting vaccination of the population over 60, arranged to register and vaccinate health workers and PDAs with a view to ensuring optimal coverage, “Bhushan said in the letter.

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