New Delhi, Sept 01:
After vaccinating 28.08 lakh people by Tuesday evening, Indore, the most populous district of Madhya Pradesh, became the first district in the country to have vaccinated its entire targeted population for first dose of over 10 lakh.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan congratulated the residents of Indore for achieving this feat and said, “Indore has once again made a new record. Amongst the districts with over 10 lakh population, Indore has become the first district in the country to vaccinate its entire eligible population with the first dose of the vaccine.”
This comes after Indore city had completed vaccinating 100% of its population with Covid-19 vaccines by August 13 when a total of 18.82 lakh doses were administered against its targeted population of 18.81 lakh. By Tuesday evening, Indore had vaccinated 28,08,212 people with the first dose against its eligible population of 28,07,559. The total population of Indore stands at 42.41 lakhs of which, 28.07 lakh are eligible for vaccination.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Indore Collector Manish Singh said, “Apart from having the benefit of citizens being well informed on the importance of getting vaccinated, the strategy of vaccination, right from the place of setting up booths to motivating people was done by including all stakeholders like community leaders, MPs, MLA, councillors and even ex-councillors and their rivals.”
“In an area like Khajrana, it’s not one councillor that holds influence but seven to eight different leaders in different pockets. All of them were tapped and using their inputs, booths were set up and vaccination drives were conducted. It was particularly difficult to get the last 5% to get vaccinated. For every one unvaccinated person, there was at least a push from five different people,” said Singh.
He also pointed out that officers of every department, from revenue to agriculture, in the district were given their areas and their sections were defined. These officers functioned as section officers to ensure their area is fully-vaccinated.
As per Indore Municipal Commissioner Pratibha Pal, around 2,000 vaccination centres were set up across the district apart from 25 pink centres for pregnant women and another 12 drive-in-centres. The district also had an additional 100 mobile teams to vaccinate those living in remote areas. “We also received tremendous response from various committees, including Ranjit Hanuman and Khajrana temple committees, industrial committees and automobile committees and all other associations and NGOs,” said Pal.
So far, after Indore, the second highest of 17.23 lakh doses have been administered in Bhopal, followed by 14.34 lakh in Jabalpur and another 12.86 lakh in Ujjain. The state so far has recorded 3.82 crore first doses and 82.19 lakh second doses.
