A meeting of senior officials of Health and Tribal Development departments chaired by Wayanad District Collector Adeela Abdulla on Thursday chalked out an action plan to intensify vaccination drive against the spread of COVID-19 among tribespeople in Wayanad.
The decision was taken in the wake of the rising number of COVID-19 cases among tribespeople in the district, Ms. Abdulla said after the meeting.
The meeting decided to launch a special campaign for the purpose, Ms. Abdulla said.
A six-day campaign will be launched in the three tribal development blocks in the district. Mobile vaccination units of the Health Department would visit tribal hamlets in each wards of the 25 local bodies in the district and administer vaccine to all members as part of the campaign, she said.
The campaign would begin after getting sufficient stock of vaccine and prior to it officials of the Arogya Keralam project would launch an awareness drive, ‘Gothra Raksha Varam’, among tribal communities.
As many as 10,206 of the 15,425 tribespeople above the age of 65 years were administered the first dose of the vaccine so far. In all, 5,080 members of the 28,607 tribespeople between the age group of 45 and 50 were also vaccinated.
A total of 69,709 tribespeople are in the age group of 18 to 44 years and steps to vaccinate them were under way, Ms. Abdulla added.
According to available data of the Health Department, as many as 3,805 COVID-19 positive cases were reported among tribespeople in the district so far and 2,525 among them recovered. Eight tribespeople died of the pandemic.
