Thomas (Special correspondent)
Karnataka topped the Covid vaccination drive in the country today by administering a whopping 28.90 lakh doses till 11:30 pm.
The State stood first in the country ahead of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh which achieved over 26.62 lakh doses and 24.86 lakh doses respectively.
Dr K Sudhakar, Minister for Health & Family Welfare and Medical Education,lauded the State’s efforts.
I would like to thank all the health workers and other staff who have been involved in this historic vaccination drive.
It is a phenomenal effort by Karnataka to administer more doses today than Uttar Pradesh and Bihar which have several times more population, he said.
It is really apt that this effort coincides with the birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,who has led the war on Covid from the front,he said.
Karnataka also crossed 5 crore doses today in the process.
The top districts in Karnataka are BBMP area (3.98 lakh doses),Belagavi (2.39 lakh doses),Dakshina Kannada (1.33 lakh doses), Ballari (1.33 lakh doses),Tumkuru (1.24 lakh doses) and Mandya (1.15 lakh doses).
Bengaluru Urban,Shivamogga,Dharwad, Ramanagara,Hassana,Davanagere, Chikamagaluru and Haveri districts achieved more than 100% of the day’s target.
With today’s performance,total doses administered in the State in September have gone up to 87 lakhs.
We are very confident of crossing the target of 1.5 Crore that we have set ourselves for September,”Sudhakar said.
Today’s vaccination drive was conducted in over 12,000 Covid vaccination centres across the State.
With this,Karnataka has administered a total of 5.12 crore doses till 9 pm on September 17.We are confident of vaccinating the entire adult population in the State by the end of November.
India today administered a whopping 2.25 crore doses today till 9 pm.The total doses administered in India till September 17 has crossed 79 crore he added.
