A Mumbai woman, who turned 100 on March 5, celebrated a special birthday at an inoculation centre. As a gift, Parvati Khedkar, born on March 5 1921, received her first shot of Covid-19 vaccine at the city’s Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) vaccination centre on Friday.
India started nationwide coronavirus vaccine drive on 16 January. During the first phase of vaccination, the healthcare workers and frontline workers received Covid-19 doses. Since March 1, those who are above 60 years of age are getting jabbed against novel coronavirus.
Maharashtra is facing the toughest time since the beginning of the pandemic last year as the western state has been clocking the highest number of Covid-19 cases. The state on Friday registered 10,216 new infections — the highest since October 16. The state now has 90,055 active cases after touching a low of 30,265 on February 10.
The Centre has also rushed high-level multi-disciplinary public health teams to Maharashtra in view of the increase in number of daily Covid-19 cases. The high-level team to Maharashtra will be led by P Ravindran, Sr CMO, Disaster Management Cell, MOHFW. The team will visit the (Covid-19) hotspot areas in the state and ascertain reasons for the surge in cases, the health ministry said.
A record 1,13,669 people were vaccinated against Covid-19 in Maharashtra on Saturday, the first time the number of beneficiaries covered in a day crossed the 1-lakh mark, state health officials said. Of these, 93,476 received the first dose and the rest 20,193 were administered the second one, and included 62,342 people over the age of 60 and 11,241 in the 45 plus age group with comorbidities, an official release said.
“The ones who got the first dose included 10,904 health care and 8,989 frontline workers, while for the second dose, the figures were 17,225 and 2,968 respectively,” he said. The number of people vaccinated so far in the state since January 16 has reached 17,44,724.
