DIMAPUR:
Nagaland recorded 65 per cent Covid-19 vaccination coverage as of March 30, state immunisation officer Ritu Thurr said, on March 31.
Informing that the weekly sample positivity rate of Covid-19 infections in the state has consistently remained below 2 per cent for the past one month, she attributed the low vaccination coverage in the state to vaccine hesitancy in the state.
State nodal officer, Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme, Nyanthung Kikon said that Nagaland is not going by the 2011 census but by headcount as far as the Covid-19 vaccination drive is concerned. “So, there is a slight difference between national and state vaccination percentage,” he said.
Kikon said there is not only vaccine hesitancy but also resistance to the vaccination drive is also contributing to low jab per centage in the state.
As per the data provided by Kikon, while 84.7 per cent of health workers received the second dose of Covid-19 vaccine, 99.7 per cent of them were administered in the first dose.
Among the frontline workers, 99.7 per cent received the first dose and 79.9 per cent were jabbed during the second dose, he informed, adding that 65.4 per cent received the first dose in the age group of 18-44 years and 48.7 per cent were vaccinated with the second dose. “In the age group of 45 years and above, 48.7 per cent has received the first dose and 41.9 per cent, the second dose,” he said.
A total of 25,012 people received the precautionary dose. Altogether 14,59,957 Covid-19 vaccine doses were administered in the state so far.
