As part of the plan to ramp up the COVID vaccination drive in villages, the health workers visited Machavaram, near Kandukur, in Prakasam district on Saturday and used all their persuasive skills to convince the seniors who were hesitant to take the jab.
The sleepy village turned livelier as one after another lined up to take the vaccine, and in total, 282 persons were covered by dusk.
The situation was no different in Tangutur village, selected for the pilot initiative to cover all the eligible villagers on a saturation basis on Saturday. Hesitancy gave way to cooperation and as many as 224 persons were administered the vaccine.
Roadblocks
Though the vaccination programme suffered roadblocks initially for various reasons, including issues on the registration front and lack of smart phones, the response is now better, said Prakasam District Medical and Health Officer P. Ratnavalli. “We have created helpdesks in all the village secretariats for the purpose and posted a health worker to assist the elders to make on the spot registration,” she added.
So far, 81,209 in the age group of 45-59 and seniors have been covered in Prakasam district and another 15,000 persons have registered their names for taking the vaccine.
Nellore
The response was good also in the neighbouring SPSR Nellore district, where the focused approach of reaching out to the vulnerable people at the grassroots level was taken up in Kaluvaya and Pandaluru villages on Saturday.
Over 100 persons took the jab in the two villages, Nellore DMHO S.Rajyalakshmi said.
On an average, 8,000 persons are being administered the vaccine each day, the health official said, adding that the department was making all-out efforts to step up the vaccination programme from Monday by covering all those aged above 45.
Active cases
Meanwhile, the number of active cases rose to 408 in both the districts as 66 tested positive during the last 24 hours while 10 persons were discharged from hospitals following recovery.
