Naina Mishra Tribune News Service Chandigarh January 27 The UT Administration aims to map all healthcare workers for the first phase of vaccination by the end of January to proceed with the next round of frontline workers. Of the target of over 20000 beneficiaries with the UT for the first phase including healthcare workers from the PGI around 25 per cent have been mapped by medical institutions so far. As many as 4895 have been invited for vaccination and 2464 of them have been inoculated. The Administration has decided to give each beneficiary two chances before moving ahead with the next target group. Dr Amandeep Kaur Kang Director Health Services Chandigarh said “We are planning to cover all healthcare workers by the end of January. That was the reason behind increasing the number of sites. Our aim is that at least two messages are sent to the beneficiaries before closing the vaccination for the first group. We will move on to vaccinate frontline workers in the next month in line with the directions from the Central Government.” Arun Gupta Principal Health Secretary UT said “There is still hesitancy among the health staff for the Covid-19 vaccination. This is evident from the fact that an overall turnout of 50 per cent witnessed in the first week was among those who were already counselled for vaccination. One of the possible reasons for not choosing to get vaccinated is because of the low Covid transmission of late. The situation would have been different if the vaccine was to be introduced when the pandemic was at its peak.” The turnout for the Covid-19 vaccination has been 50 per cent rendering the staff deployed at the vaccination sites “idle”. On Wednesday only eight people came forward for vaccination at a hospital in Mani Majra while 51 people turned up at the two sites of the GMCH Sector 32 thought the target was 200 beneficiaries. Gupta said the Administration had requested to increase the number of beneficiaries to be inoculated at one site to 200. However they were not granted permission.

Stay updated with all the Chandigarh Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.