New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday directed states to utilise the full capacity of private hospitals to operate as vaccination sites, as India entered Day II of the third phase of the inoculation drive on Tuesday. All private hospitals that are not empanelled under the Central government schemes are now permitted to operate as vaccination sites.
The cumulative number of Covid vaccine doses administered in the country crossed 1.54 crore on Tuesday. As per the provisional report of the Union Health ministry, a total of 1,54,61,864 vaccine doses have been given till 7 pm.
"Of the total, 67,32,944 healthcare workers have been administered the first dose and 26,85,665 HCWs have taken the second dose, while 55,47,426 FLWs have been administered the first dose and 828 FLWs have been given the second dose," it said, adding that 4,34,981 beneficiaries belonging to more than 60 years and 60,020 beneficiaries are aged 45 and above with specific co-morbidities.
In a single day, a total of 6,09,845 vaccine doses were given till 7 pm on the 46th day of the nationwide Covid-19 vaccination drive.
India's COVID-19 cases rose to 1,11,24,527 with 12,286 new infections being reported in a day, while the recoveries have surged to 1,07,98,921, according to data updated by the ministry on Tuesday.
The death toll increased to 1,57,248 with 91 new fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed.
The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 1,07,98,921 which translates into a national COVID-19 recovery rate of 97.07 per cent, while the case fatality rate has dropped 1.41 per cent.
The active caseload was recorded at 1,68,358 which accounts for 1.51 per cent of the total infections, the data stated.
Five states accounted for 84.16 per cent of the active infections, while six states and UTs have a weekly positivity rate higher than the national average of 2 per cent, the ministry added. Maharashtra and Kerala alone account for 67.84 per cent of total active cases, it said.
Six states and UTs, including Maharashtra, Kerala, Goa, Chandigarh, Punjab and Gujarat have a weekly positivity rate higher than the national average of 2 per cent. Maharashtra leads all the states with a weekly positivity rate of 10.02 per cent, the ministry said.
The ministry said 80.33 per cent of the new cases are from five states.
Maharashtra continues to report the highest daily new cases at 6,397. It is followed by Kerala with 1,938 while Punjab reported 633 new cases.
Meanwhile, about 50 lakh people have registered themselves on the Co-WIN portal, without any system glitch, since the window opened on Monday morning, the Centre said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, about 50 lakh people have registered themselves on the Co-WIN portal, without any system glitch, since the window opened on Monday morning, the Centre said on Tuesday. R S Sharma, the Chairman of the Empowered Group (EG) on COVID-19 Vaccine Administration, said there were no glitches in the system.
What happened was that people were looking for an App on Playstore which appeared similar to Co-WIN and started using that when no mobile app meant for registration is actually present right now, he said.
Citizens can register and book an appointment for vaccination, anytime and anywhere, using the Co-WIN 2.0 portal or through other IT applications such as Aarogya Setu, he said.
He said the government is watching the system closely as it has to be "highly scalable".
"It should be able to take care of a huge amount of load. After all, it is a program with which we will be vaccinating 1/6th of humanity and this program has to cater to millions of people at the same time," he said. The number of transactions and data transmission will be very large, he said.
"We want data to be secure and free from cyber-attacks. We are taking best security practices. We are only collecting data in the form of name, age and gender as we need to monitor the second dose," he said. He added that state governments are coordinating with hospitals and supplying vaccines to them and "we are encouraging them to involve more and more private hospitals".