Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Thursday announced a special drive to vaccinate students between the age group of 18 and 25 in colleges. The State had opened colleges from October 20.
Addressing a press conference, Mr. Tope said the drive would start from October 25 and would continue till November 2. “We have given three days to colleges to collect data on how many students have received the first dose. Based on that data, we will make our assessment on the requirement of doses to fully vaccinate the students,” he said. Higher and Technical Education Minister Uday Samant was also present.
Both the Ministers had earlier held a joint meeting with officials from their respective departments to chalk out the plan to vaccinate college students.
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Apart from collecting data, the colleges would also have to provide three rooms for the vaccination process. Medical staff and the vaccines would be provided by the Health Department. As per the guidelines issued by the State Government, only those students who had taken two doses of vaccine were allowed to attend the offline classes. Mr. Samant said the rest could attend online classes till they received both doses.
Talking about the State’s overall performance with regard to COVID-19 vaccination, Mr. Tope said Maharashtra ranked number one in the list of States with the highest number of people who had been given two doses of the vaccine. “Around 6.4 crore people in the State have been given one dose of the vaccine, while 2.9 crore have received the second dose,” he said.
The Minister added that since restrictions on various activities and movement were being lifted and the festive season was in progress, a possible third wave of the pandemic post-Diwali could only be countered by increased vaccination.
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