The vaccination programme in Gujarat will not be available this Sunday (August 22). Health Minister Nitin Patel in a release said the vaccination programme will remain closed for Rakshabandhan which falls on a Sunday.
Patel said this was being done to ensure that health workers could celebrate the festival as well. It should be noted that initially when the vaccination programme began it was not available during official holidays and Sundays.
Later as the cases surged, the government, to ensure maximum vaccination, made the facility available even on Sundays. Thus government vaccinations centres continued to function throughout the week so that those who could not afford to take an off from work could get vaccinated on a Sunday. Gujarat has so far provided over 4 lakh doses of vaccine to its population.
The state has so far vaccinated 20% of its eligible population with both doses of the vaccine. Around 62% of the total eligible population has got the first dose of the vaccine. Gujarat has around 4.93 crore population that is eligible for a vaccine.
Earlier Nitin Patel said that the daily supply of vaccines to Gujarat had increased from 3 lakh doses a day to 6 lakh doses a day. Gujarat has been consistently recording a drop in COVID cases in the state for close to a month now.
On Thursday the state recorded 19 new COVID cases. It has a recovery rate of 98.76 % while the total fatality due to COVID so far is over 10,000.