Nagaland gears up for Covid vaccination

Eastern Mirror Desk
Dimapur, Jan. 9 (EMN): Nagaland’s Health department has said that the state is all geared up for the first phase of Covid-19 vaccination and expressed the need for reinforcing Covid appropriate behaviours again as the much-awaited inoculation will reach the general population soon.

The department, in its weekly bulletin, said that dry run for covid-19 vaccination was conducted across the state in 31 session sites on January 8, as part of preparation for the inoculation drive, which the government of India said, will begin on January 16.

“19,690 health workers have been registered for vaccination in the first phase and a total of 1,206 session sites have been identified for the Covid-19 vaccination drive in the state,” read the update.

While informing that symptomatic cases are steadily increasing in the state despite a decline in positivity rate, the department said “there is no room for complacency”.

“Symptomatic cases among active cases increased from 1% in July 2020 to 24% as of this week. There has been a slight increase in the mortality rate to 0.61% this week. High percentage of symptomatic cases points to undetected asymptomatic cases in the community,” it stated.

It informed that four Covid-4 deaths and 35 new cases were reported last week ending January 8, as weekly sample positivity rate declined to 3%, and that overall sample positivity rate remains high at 9.8%.

“Positivity rate among household contacts (29%) continue to remain more than the office goers at 23% and 19% among students,” said the update.

Cases from flu clinics and self-test without travel history or contact continue to increase (14% of cases from the community), it said, adding that recovery rate in the state stands at 97% as on January 8 (97.19% on Saturday).

‘A total of 34,007 contacts have been tracked by surveillance teams out of which 14,637 are primary contacts and 50% of traced contacts are within the 21-40 years age group.

Out of the total Covid-19 cases in the state, as on January 8, traced contacts account for 40.98%, armed forces-38.86%, returnees and travellers-15.42%, and frontline workers-4.74%.