Guwahati, July 4: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday said that one crore of the state's population will be vaccinated against COVID-19 by July as the state is scheduled to receive 30 lakh vaccine doses this month. He also denied reports of vaccine shortage in the state.
"We will receive 30 lakh vaccines this month (July). If we can use these, our vaccination figure will touch one crore in the state," he said. The state's population is around 3.3 crore and 75.87 lakh people have been vaccinated so far, including 62.93 lakh for the first dose and 12.94 lakh for the second dose. To a question, whether there was a shortage of vaccines as the number of people vaccinated daily fluctuate drastically, Sarma maintained that there is no scarcity.
"We are given the vaccines in batches (of varying quantities) by the Centre. Hence, on some days we have more people vaccinated," he said. The Chief Minister further said a new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the state will be issued on Monday with a focus on the vulnerable districts. "If we take away the figures for some districts like Golaghat and Jorhat, we can see that the situation is under control otherwise," he said.
The recovery rate of COVID-19 patients is also nearing 95 per cent, which is also positive news, he added. The total COVID-19 cases in the state were 5,15,981 on Saturday, according to the bulletin of the National Health Mission, Assam. The corona virus death toll stood at 4,632, while the number of active cases in the state was 23,737.
Altogether 4,86,265 patients have recovered from the infection so far.
