In a bid to expedite the COVID immunity drive in Lucknow, the district administration has launched a cluster campaign to administer the vaccination jab without booking a slot. From today onwards, all eligible beneficiaries, including those aged between 18 to 44 years, will not be required to book any online slot to get the vaccine dose. These people can simply head to Cluster Vaccination Centres in the city and get inoculated directly.

Cluster vaccination scheme to benefit those in the the18-44 age group

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Around 186 vaccination centres in Lucknow have been brought under the scope of the cluster vaccination programme. As such, the availability of the COVID vaccine is set to scale much higher from today. The scheme will hugely benefit those in the 18 to 44 age group, who can now access the benefit of on-spot registration for vaccination. On the crutches of this new scheme, the district aims to achieve more than 50 lakh vaccination coverage in urban settlements and rural areas.

The cluster jab scheme has been developed in light of vaccine shortage and lack of proper management. For the last 3 days, the Health Department was opening the vaccination slots once a day yet its timing was not scheduled. This increased the complexity of booking an appointment for the jab. At many centres, people were turned away without the dose due to a lack of resources.

Quick booking of Sputnik shots at Medanta

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At the same time, Lucknow has also started to administer the Russian-origin Sputnik vaccine since last Saturday. For now, these shots are available at the Medanta Hospital in the city for 3 days a week, marked at ₹1,145. The institute administration informed that all slots of these vaccines get booked within 2 minutes of their availability, despite the high rate.

As yet, the district has administered about 14,14,725 doses of the anti-COVID jab, including 11,46,181 vaccines of the first dose and 2,68,544 of the second dose. This number incidentally happens to be the highest inoculation feat in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

The state has facilitated 3,12,65,895 COVID jabs, across all 75 districts, since January 2021. These consists of 2,67,80,382 first dose and 44,85,513 second dose of the jab. These numbers suggest that UP has managed to inoculate about 11.9% of its dense population with at least the first dose of the vaccination.