Capacity to vaccinate 4L a day: Punjab Govt

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 3

Punjab has a capacity to vaccinate 4 lakh persons a day, said state Minister for Health and Family Welfare Balbir Singh Sidhu today, adding a robust storage capacity of 1 crore vaccines had been set up in state’s own cold chain centres.

Addressing a press conference, Sidhu urged the Centre to provide the Covid-19 vaccine free of cost to the state within a stipulated period. The Modi government cannot backtrack from its duty of supplying the vaccine, he said.

Giving details of state’s preparedness, Principal Secretary Health Hussan Lal said the vaccine would be given to around 70 lakh persons in a phased manner, including 1.6 lakh healthcare and frontline workers, people aged above 50 and those with co-morbidities aged below 50. The criteria of the age would be counted as on January 1.

The Health Minister said the state had also achieved more than 95 per cent of routine vaccination of children, highest in the country.

He said 5,364 Covid-related deaths had occurred in the state, at the rate of 178 deaths per million. In comparison, 10,577 deaths took place in Delhi at the rate of 528 deaths per million.

“We are in better position than other states. Punjab has a recovery rate of 95 per cent and active cases are declining by the day,” said the minister.

Sidhu added the ambit of the original Ayushman Bharat Yojana of the Centre was limited to 14 lakh families shortlisted as per the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) Data-2011, while the state government decided to increase the number of families to 40 lakh.

To date, treatment services worth Rs 574.86 crore had been provided to 4,99,593 beneficiaries, with premium of Rs 418 crore having been paid to the insurance company.

Free supply sought

• The Health Minister urged the Centre to provide vaccine free of cost to the state within a stipulated period
• He said the Modi government could not backtrack from its duty of supplying the vaccine
• “We are in better position than other states. Punjab has a recovery rate of 95%,” said the minister
• He also said the ambit of the Ayushman Bharat Yojana was limited to 14 lakh families