At 20 shots a day, Covid vaccination drive continues declining trend in Ludhiana

Long gone are the days when city residents, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, would have to wrestle for the slightest of room at vaccination centres — which now witness minimal footfall.

The vaccination drive has witnessed a steady decline in the district over the last few months.With residents only sporadically showing up for booster doses, pharma companies have also been forced to stop the production of the vaccine.

With the state running low, only 20 people are given vaccines at the civil hospital — with 10 doses each of Covishield and Covaxin being administered. According to health officials, almost 100 doses were earlier being given on a daily basis at the hospital.

Health authorities said a total of 62,04,252 doses of vaccine have been administered so far. Of these 50,65,179 are Covishield doses, around 11 lakh of Covaxin and almost 1.5 lakh Corbevax.

Speaking of the decline, district immunisation officer Dr Manisha Khanna said, “Due to very few fresh Covid cases being reported, there is a plateau effect in public that has lessened the effectiveness over time. People have developed herd immunity with time and have become immune to an infection.”

“We have already given more than 60 lakh Covid vaccine doses. But still, there is a group from the beginning of the pandemic who have decided that they will not get vaccinated at any cost,” she added.

Notably, no fresh Covid case was reported on Monday as per the health department. So far, a total of 1,10,607 people have recovered from the virus while 3,018 have succumbed to it. No fresh samples were taken on Monday.

Christian Medical College and Hospital and the department of rural health and outreach programmes’ (RHOP) Dr Clarence J Samuel said, “As there is a decline in fresh Covid cases in the district people have become more careless. Not only booster doses, many have not taken even the second dose.”