PUNE: The district on Thursday surpassed the milestone of administering one crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines, eight months after the vaccination started.
Pune is the second district in the state to achieve the feat. According to CoWIN portal, a total of 1,00,14,107 doses were administered till 7pm on Thursday, covering 69.34 lakh beneficiaries from the eligible adult population with at least one dose and the remaining 30.79 lakh with both the doses.
The vaccination drive has recorded over 91 lakh Covishield doses getting administered and around 8 lakh doses of Covaxin. As many as 53,869 doses of Sputnik V were given after it was rolled out in July.
District collector Rajesh Deshmukh told TOI, “We geared up from the very beginning of the vaccination drive, which yielded this result. All the elements of the health department and the administration have a pivotal role to play in it.
Our next target is to cover the rest of the first dose beneficiaries and speed up the vaccination of those due for the second dose. We are microplanning it and one can expect more mega vaccination drives.”
Sanjay Patil, the chairman of the Hospital Board of India of Indian Medical Association (IMA), Pune chapter, told TOI, “This is a great achievement for all of us — the district administration, citizens and all the elements involved in the vaccination process, including the healthcare workers in the government and private hospitals.
Now that around 80% of our target population has received at least one dose, we are very near to achieve the herd immunity and hopefully, the pending beneficiaries for the second dose, too, would be immunized at the earliest.”
According to Patil, this should be the highest number of shots administered in the history of Pune and a proud moment. The vaccination drive started from January 16 across the district amid hesitancy among the healthcare workers, the first beneficiaries.
The frontline workers were given vaccines from February 1, while the senior citizens (60-plus) were offered jabs from March 1.
