The Odisha government Monday said it would resume vaccination against COVID-19 from January 19 at identified hospitals across the state.
Health and Family Welfare secretary Shalini Pandit said that under the National COVID-19 vaccination programme, Covishield vaccines will be available from January 19 in identified District Headquarters Hospitals (DHH), Sub-divisional Hospitals (SDH), Community Healthcare Centre (CHC) and Primary Healthcare Centres (PHC) across the state for second dose due as well as precautionary dose due to beneficiaries.
Earlier, the state government had advised the people to go for second dose and precaution dose in the wake of surge of COVID-19 in some foreign countries. So far 8,14,50,160 doses have been administered in Odisha, of which 3,52,50,344 were first doses, 3,30,00,990 were second doses and 1,31,98,826 were precautionary doses.
Odisha’s Health and Family Welfare minister NK Das had earlier written to the Centre urging it to provide vaccines as the state is required to provide precautionary dose to left out citizens aged 18 years and above in the state. Keeping in view the demands from various categories of citizens, there is further requirement of precautionary dose to cater to left out 1.93 crore people against total of 3.25 crore citizens, the minister said.