Precaution Dose Effective Against Omicron Variant, Available In 12 Pvt Hospitals In Odisha: Health Director

Bhubaneswar: Precautionary doses of COVID -19 are available in 12 private hospitals across Odisha, including Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Sambalpur, Dhenkanal and Sundargarh, Health Director Bijay Panigrahi informed on Friday.

“Free vaccination against the deadly virus has been paused in government hospitals. We had also procured around 16.17 lakh vaccines from outside the state. Since only 41% per cent of those above 18 years of age have taken booster doses, we will write to the Centre to supply COVID vaccines for free to the state after a high-level meeting scheduled today,” he said, adding that  97% of beneficiaries have been taken the first dose while the second dose has been administered to 94% population.

He further said that people, who have already taken the precautionary dose, are protected from getting infected with Omicron’s new sub-variant BF.7 strain believed to be driving the recent surge of cases in China.

The Health Director said that Odisha has good herd immunity since 97 per cent have been vaccinated and those affected by COVID have developed natural immunity against the virus.

Talking about the one sample detected with BF.7 strain, he said that the person is doing fine and no other case of the variant has been detected in the last 3 months. “The state has been reporting 0-5 cases every day and the positive samples are being sent for genome sequencing,” he said.

He added that the government is prepared to curb the spread of infection.