Srinagar, May 03: The Jammu and Kashmir government is planning to vaccinate the 18-45 age group in all districts after two weeks.
Director General of Family Welfare, MCH and Immunisation, J&K, Dr Saleem Ur Rehman said that as of now they received only one type of vaccine for the 18-45 age group.
“For other districts, we are going to start the vaccination drive for the age group in around two weeks. We can’t say the exact date,” he said.
On Saturday, vaccination drive for 18-45 was started in Srinagar and Jammu after Bharat Biotech's Covaxin was launched while rest of the districts are still waiting for inoculation.
Jammu and Kashmir is witnessing record rise in casualties and daily caseload.
Officer on special duty in the Health and Medical Education Department, Dr Shafqat Khan said the vaccination drive is underway.
“The vaccination has intensified since Sunday. All the youth will be vaccinated and people should cooperate with us,” he said.
Khan said as part of measures to contain the virus, they have extended the testing capacity of all COVID-19 labs across Jammu and Kashmir.
The phase-1 of vaccination started on 16 January for healthcare and frontline workers while for citizens above 60 and above 45 with comorbidities, the vaccination started from 1 March. While for people above 45 the vaccination was started from 01 April.
Health officials also said that 3,000 to 4,000 vaccination centres will be set up to ensure that there is no rush during the vaccination drive.
In the past four months, more than 23 lakh people including health care and frontline workers have been vaccinated and there has been no untoward reaction in any case.
So far, J&K has reported 2370 deaths caused by the virus while the infection tally has soared to 18,34,86 and the daily caseload continues to go up.
