Sanjeev Kumar Patro

Bhubaneswar: With the country and the State on Saturday taking a leap of vaccination, it is the time to take a cursory glance at the Covid-19 infection situation in the State on the V (vaccination) - day today.

  • The Active caseload (2,087) in the State on Saturday stands at around 0.6 per cent from a high of over 18 per cent in September 2020, and 100 per cent active caseload in the month of March 2020 – the month when the State detected its first two Covid-19 positives.
  • The total recoveries today stand at over 98.7 per cent from over 81 per cent by September end last year, and at around 7 per cent in April – the month when Odisha recorded its first Covid-19 recoveries.
  • The cumulative death rate (1,899) on Saturday is around 0.57 per cent from 2.5 per cent in April. However, the death rate in September 2020 stood at around 0.4 per cent.

Districts In Focus Today

In April 2020, it was Khordha. The focus later shifted to Ganjam by July. And By September, the focus was on – Khordha, Cuttack, Puri, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Bhadrak, Angul, Bargarh, Sambalpur, Sundergarh and Jharsuguda.

January 16, 2021: The virus new cases arelimited to within two dozen in earlier hotspot districts like Ganjam, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur and Bhadrak.The virus down but not out in districts like Khurda, Puri and Cuttack.

But the virus has been a force to reckon with in western Odisha, especially Sundergarh.With a total active caseload of around 288, as per State health department data, the district still figured among the top 150 districts in the country.

The daily new positives in the district in themonth of January 2021 hover at around 30 per day. Other watchful districts are: Sambalpur, Bargarh and Jharsuguda.

The four districts of western Odisha – Sundergarh, Sambalpur, Bargarh and Jharsuguda – are accounting for 35-48 per cent of the new corona virus positives in the State during the last 15-days in month of January 2021.

Focus Of Vaccination

As the virus is still a counting force in the districts, the State Government has focused on immunisation of the healthcare workers there. While the total of vaccination sites in the said 4 districts account for over 14 per cent of the total of 161 sites, in inoculation exercise too, the number of recipients in the four districts account for around 15 per cent of the total registered healthcare workers (3.38 lakh), who are to be vaccinated in the state in the first round of Covid-19 immunisation programme.

The Imperative Of Vaccination

The purpose of vaccination is to induce herd immunity against the coronavirus so as to make its contagiousness ineffective. At present, the count of Covid-19 positives till date in the State stands at over 3.33 lakh, which is a mere around 0.8 per cent of the population of Odisha.

Herd Immunity: As per WHO, Herd immunity, also known as 'population immunity', is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.
Therefore, when the infection proportion in Odisha stood at below 1 per cent, the vaccination is the only sure shot to defeat the contagious corona virus.

As per organisations like WHO, Centre for Disease control and Prevention (CDC) and University of Oxford, the herd immunity will be attained against Covid-19 when over 60 per cent population get infected by the contagious virus.

In the phase-1 vaccination alone, Odisha will vaccinate nearly 3.38 lakh population of the State. As per the Union Health Ministry data, by August 2021, a high of around 22-25 per cent population in Odisha or over 1.5 crore population will be inoculated against Covid-19. The rate of 60 per cent for Herd immunity, therefore, can be achieved by the end of 2022 only, suggests data of Union Health Ministry.

Vaccination Status Worldwide

Israel is the only country in the world to immunize nearly 15 per cent of the population. Bahrain stands second with an immunisation rate of 3.7 per cent.

The phase-1 vaccination in India today will see immunisation of over 2 per cent of the population in the country, when the vaccination proportion in UK and USA stood at around 1.39 and 1.46 per cent, respectively, revealed a SBI research study.

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