West Bengal to launch house-to-house campaign to identify unvaccinated beneficiaries

Kolkata: In order to ramp up the vaccination programme against covid-19 further, the West Bengal government has decided to initiate a house-to-house campaign to identify beneficiaries who are yet to be administered the first dose of the vaccine.

This can be done by forming a team of frontline workers who can reach all the families of an area, register all such beneficiaries, create awareness and encourage people to get their dose of vaccine, according to an order issued by the health department on Tuesday.

"This strategy can also be used for mobilising the due beneficiaries of the second dose," it added. The team may also prepare a list of all vulnerable and bedridden unvaccinated persons for inoculating them early, the order added.

Meanwhile, West Bengal on Tuesday reported 788 new Covid-19 cases, 185 more than the previous day's figure, pushing the tally to 15,99,878, the health department said in a bulletin.

The number of fresh cases in the city, which was 149 on Monday, shot up to 202 in the last 24 hours. Twelve more coronavirus patients died, raising the death toll to 19,252. Fourteen people had died due to the disease on Monday.

Kolkata and neighbouring North 24 Parganas district accounted for four fatalities each while one death each was reported from Birbhum, Nadia and Jalpaiguri districts, the bulletin added.

In the last 24 hours, 759 recoveries were registered in the state as the discharge rate remained unchanged at 98.30 per cent. Altogether 15,72,711 people have recovered from the disease so far.

The number of active cases also rose slightly to 7,916. It was 7,899 on Monday. West Bengal in the last 24 hours tested 37,248 samples for Covid-19 taking the total number of such clinical examinations to 1,95,30,766, the bulletin said.

On Tuesday, 6,54,830 doses of the vaccine were administered pushing the total number of people getting at least one dose of the vaccine to 8,24,84,274, an official said.