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Over 1.90 lakh beneficiaries were inoculated with COVID-19 jabs at 3,352 session sites across the country on Saturday and no case of post-inoculation hospitalisation has been reported so far, the government said on the first day of India's massive vaccination drive against the virus.
The COVID-19 vaccination drive was successfully conducted on the first day, Additional Secretary in the Union health ministry Manohar Agnani said during a press briefing.
Giving an update on COVID-19 vaccination, the health ministry said 3,352 vaccination sessions were held and 1,91,181 beneficiaries vaccinated.
A total of 16,755 personnel were involved in organising the vaccination sessions, Agnani said.
The 11 states and union territories where both Covishield and Covaxin were administered were Assam (65 sessions), Bihar (301), Delhi (81), Haryana (77), Karnataka (242), Maharashtra (285), Odisha (161), Rajasthan (167) Tamil Nadu (160), Telangana (14) and Uttar Pradesh (317).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the vaccination drive while reassuring the country that emergency use authorisation was given to two made in India vaccines only after scientists were convinced of their safety and effectiveness, and urged people to beware of propaganda and rumours.
The 1,91,181 beneficiaries included 225 from Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 79 from Ladakh, 43 from Daman and Diu, 80 from Dadra And Nagar Haveli, 21 from Lakshadweep, 265 from Chandigarh and 426 from Goa.
Besides, 18,412 were vaccinated in Andhra Pradesh, 18,169 in Bihar, 18,328 in Maharashtra, 5592 in Chhattisgarh, 10,787 in Gujarat, 829 in Arunachal Pradesh, 3528 in Assam, 4,319 in Delhi, 5,589 in Haryana, 1,517 in Himachal Pradesh and 2,044 in Jammu and Kashmir.
More than one crore cases and 1.5 lakh fatalities later, India took its first steps out of the pandemic with shots of the Covishield and Covaxin vaccines being administered at medical centres across the country.
Sanitation worker Manish Kumar became the first recipient of the vaccination drive at Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), according to the health ministry.
Of the first day, 3,096 beneficiaries were in Jharkhand, 13,594 in Karnataka, 8,062 in Kerala, 9,219 in Madhya Pradesh, 585 in Manipur, 509 in Meghalaya, 314 in Mizoram, 561 in Nagaland, 13,746 in Odisha, 274 in Puducherry, 1,319 in Punjab, 9,279 in Rajasthan, 120 in Sikkim, 2,945 in Tamil Nadu, 3,653 in Telangana, 355 in Tripura, 21,291 in Uttar Pradesh, 2,276 in Uttarakhand and 9,730 in West Bengal.
Agnani said 2,182 defence personnel, who are healthcare workers, were also vaccinated.
The sessions in states where Covishield was administered: two sessions in Andaman and Nicobar, 332 in Andhra Pradesh, nine in Arunachal Pradesh, four in Chandigarh, 97 in Chhattisgarh, one each Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, seven in Goa, he said.
Covishield was administered in 161 sessions in Gujarat, 28 sessions in Himachal Pradesh, 41 in Jammu and Kashmir, 48 in Jharkhand and 133 from Kerala, two in Ladakh, one in Lakshadweep, 150 in Madhya Pradesh, 10 each in Manipur and Meghalaya, five in Mizoram, nine in Nagaland, eight in Puducherry, 59 in Punjab, two in Sikkim, 18 in Tripura, 34 in Uttarakhand and 183 in West Bengal.
Some of the issues faced on the first day of vaccination were delay in uploading of beneficiary lists at some session sites whose resolution was done by improving system performance and speed, Agnani said.
Another issue faced was that some healthcare workers vaccinated though not scheduled for Saturday's session whose resolution he said was reached by process evolution and states were advised to upload details of such healthcare worker in Co-WIN database.
The ministry has said each vaccination session will cater to a maximum of 100 beneficiaries per day and has advised states not to organise 'unreasonable numbers of vaccination per site per day'.
Further, states and union territories have been advised to utilise a maximum of 10 days in a fortnight for COVID-19 vaccination.
According to official sources, 95 people were vaccinated at AIIMS on Saturday while 31 people got vaccinated at Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital and no side affects have been reported in any of the beneficiaries.
Officials said 26 beneficiaries were vaccinated at Lady Hardinge Hospital (Kalawati Hospital) while 72 healthcare workers got vaccinated at Safdarjung Hospital.
According to the government, the shots will be offered first to an estimated one crore healthcare workers, and around two crore frontline workers, and then to persons above 50 years of age, followed by persons younger than 50 years of age with associated comorbidities totally estimated to be around 27 crore.
Cost of vaccination of healthcare and frontline workers will be borne by the central government.