Over 8 lakh doses administered on Lasika Utsav day

Officials said that the same momentum would be sustained on other days as well

Continuing the weekly ‘Lasika Utsav’ drive, Karnataka administered 8,17,649 doses till 9 p.m. on Friday. The drive, which is held every Wednesday, was postponed to Friday this week on account of a general holiday.

With this, Karnataka has administered a total of 6,29,87,790 doses so far of which 2,12,30,861 are second doses. Of the total doses, 1.05 crore doses were administered during various vaccination drives and weekly ‘Lasika Utsavs.’

Although the State had set a target of administering 25 lakh doses on Friday, not even half the target could be met. Arundathi Chandrashekar, State Mission Director, National Health Mission, admitted it is a challenge to motivate and vaccinate the remaining population.

“Although our vaccinators are going door-to-door to identify unvaccinated people and those who are due for second dose, they are finding it difficult to convince people to come to the vaccination centres,” she said.

She said efforts will be made to sustain the momentum and continue daily vaccination at the same pace not just on ‘Lasika Utsav’ days but also on other days. “There is no dearth of vaccine stocks and as of Friday we have over 42 lakh doses available,” she said.

According to data from the CoWIN portal, the highest number of doses (78,106) were administered in BBMP limits. Mysuru and Tumkuru followed with 49,698 and 48,331 doses respectively on Friday.

The lowest achievement for the day was recorded in Kodagu, Bengaluru Rural and Chikkamagalur where 5,307 doses, 8,520 doses and 10,210 doses were administered respectively.

Men have outnumbered women in overall vaccinations with 3,17,19,866 of the total 6,29,87,790 doses administered so far being given to men. More than half (3,47,63,494) of the total doses administered in the State are in the 18-44 years age group. As many as 1,71,86,969 persons in the 45-60 years age group and 1,10,37,327 persons aged above 60 have been jabbed so far.

New cases

Karnataka on Friday reported 378 new cases of COVID-19, taking the total to 29,85,227. Bengaluru Urban reported 195 cases and seven deaths.

With 11 deaths, the toll rose to 37,995. This is apart from 28 deaths of patients due to non-COVID-19 reasons.

As many as 464 persons were discharged on Friday, taking the total recoveries to 29,38,312. The State now has 8,891 active patients.

While the positivity rate for the day touched 0.36%, the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) touched 2.91%.

As many as 1,03,121 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, including 75,896 RT-PCR tests. With this, the total number of tests rose to 4,99,10,988.