Owing to Covid-19 and lockdown restrictions, Jharkhand achieved only 53 per cent of its routine immunisation target for children in April, officials of the health department said on Tuesday, claiming that civil surgeons of all districts in the state have been directed to conduct "catch-up" rounds of immunisation in the state's hinterland.

“Routine immunisation programmes have been running well in the state for years, but we could achieve only 53 per cent of our target in April as the focus shifted to Covid vaccination and precautionary measures to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus,” said Dr Siddharth Tripathi, the nodal officer of health department’s Information, Education and Communication (IEC) wing.

Officials at the district level have been asked to identify “left out” and "drop out" children and vaccinate them. 'Left out' children are those who did not receive any dose of vaccines since birth, while 'drop out' children are those who got a couple of vaccine doses but did not complete their full course of immunisation, officials said.

Routine immunisation plays an important role in preventing cases of measles, influenza, Japanese Encephalitis, polio, tuberculosis, diphtheria, hepatitis and rotavirus. As per data with the health department, around 8.5 lakh babies are born every year in Jharkhand and their immunisation process begins at the age of 1.5 months.

Catch-up rounds for immunising children who missed out will be run at the panchayat and block levels by Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs), health officials said. However, they clarified that routine immunisation will be held along with vaccination campaigns against Covid-19 across the state.

As per the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS), at least 30 of 1,000 infants die in rural Jharkhand. Around 165 mothers die per 1 lakh deliveries in the state every year.

The government also launched a vaccination campaign against pneumonia this month in Jharkhand. Around 77,000 infants are scheduled to get doses of Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) by the end of June.

Talking about Covid the ongoing vaccination, NHM officials claimed that vaccine wastage in Jharkhand dropped to 1.7 per cent on Tuesday. Officials from the National Health Mission (NHM) said that a total of 58,17,250 vaccine doses were made available to the state by the Centre so far, and around 1,00,844 doses have been wasted since the launch of the immunisation programme against Covid-19 on January 16. On June 10, the Centre claimed that vaccine wastage in Jharkhand was 33.95 per cent, the highest among states in India. But that was due to a lag in updating vaccination numbers in the Co-WIN portal, the state has clarified.