The Capital has received 1.25 lakh doses of Covishield and 20,000 doses of Covaxin vaccines for 18-44 age group, and the youth can now get vaccinated for free at government centres, AAP leader Atishi said on Wednesday.
“Many people between 18-44 years had been administered the first dose but were unable to get the second dose. Now, Covaxin is available and people can get the second dose,” the AAP leader said.
Ms. Atishi said that private hospitals were administering the vaccines at “exorbitant costs” and now vaccines are available at government centres free of cost.
The Delhi government spokesperson said that after the arrival of the Covishield vaccine doses, booking for the first dose of 18-44 age group will restart from Wednesday. “From today [Wednesday], booking for the first dose of Covishield for 18-44 will restart on the CoWIN platform,” the spokesperson said.
There was no stock of Covishield for 18-44 years in government facilities for the past many days and Covaxin was being given only for second dose. So, there was no free first dose for the age group.
Ms. Atishi said that the total tally of vaccines administered in Delhi has reached over 57 lakh, and 13 lakh people have been administered both the doses.
She also said that the government has received Covaxin for people of 45 years of age and above.
“On Tuesday, we had said that the stock of Covaxin is over in Delhi and it was unavailable for the 45+ age group people at many centres. Yesterday, late in the evening, Delhi received 30,000 doses of Covaxin and they are being distributed to different centres. So, from Thursday, doses of Covaxin will be available for those above the age of 45 years,” Ms. Atishi said.
Over 300 new cases
The Capital reported 337 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the total cases to 14,30,128, according to a health bulletin released by the Delhi government on Wednesday.
Also, 36 deaths were reported and the total number of deaths stood at 24,704. A total of 73,241 tests were done in a day, the bulletin said. Of the total cases, 14,00,913 people have recovered and there are 4,511 active cases. The test positivity rate was 0.46%, which means that less than one person out of 100 people taking COVID-19 tests are now positive for the virus. The TPR was as high as 36% on April 22 and has been coming down since then.
Out of the total 24,188 hospital beds, 90.08% were vacant, as per the bulletin.
