SHILLONG, June 21: The vaccination exercise has gathered pace in the state with the Meghalaya government aiming to vaccinate 30,000-50,000 people every day.
An official of the Health Department on Monday confirmed the mass vaccination plan as the government has 1 lakh doses. The state is also set to get more than 2 lakh vaccines soon.
Officials said the government has lately been satisfied with the response of the people, especially those aged 18-44 years, to the vaccination. More than 80,000 people have been vaccinated in the state so far.
“After the initial reluctance, many have started coming forward for the inoculation,” the official said.
13,000 vaccine doses were administered in the state on Monday, including 11,855 citizens in the 18+ age group.
A total of 6,03,939 citizens have been vaccinated in the state so far. A total of 5,28,722 fist dose and 75,217 second doses have been administered.
On Monday, 269 new positive cases were reported across the state. This is one of the lowest in more than a month. On May 7, the state had reported 297 cases.
But the official said this could be due to fewer people having been tested on Sunday.
“We need to wait for 2-3 days to see the trend,” he said, adding that it is more important to reduce the positivity rate than reducing the number of cases.
The positivity rate in the last seven days has been 10.28% with 3,096 cases out of 30,117 tests conducted throughout the state.
The positivity rate in East Khasi Hills continues to be high at an average of 14.29% in the last seven days with 1,035 confirmed cases and 7,242 tests.
The fatality rate across the state during the last seven days was 1.486%.