Residents in the state capital can avail vaccination at their doorstep as the Ranchi district administration on Friday launched two mobile vans for inoculation drive on a pilot basis.

State health minister Banna Gupta flagged off the vans from Jawahar Nagar club around noon. He said that the vans will target vaccination of people in the age group of 18-44 and 45 plus depending on the demands.

District administration officials maintained that the van can be pressed into action in different localities that don’t have nearby vaccination centres, or have sufficient numbers of population who are immobile. Health department officials added that depending on its success, it will gradually be rolled out in other districts too as part of the state government’s plan to increase vaccination coverage.

Deputy Commissioner Chhavi Ranjan said that the minimum requirement for sending the van should be availability of at least 20 persons in any area to receive the jabs.

“All one needs to do is to call at 7546028221 to avail the services of the mobile vaccination van. We shall also make provisions for on-spot registration of people to vaccination. Besides the existing centres for vaccination, this move will further help in increase the coverage as it can be used in areas where people wish to avail vaccination at their doorstep or are unable to come to the vaccination centre,” he said.

Gupta on the other hand dubbed it as a landmark initiative in their efforts towards ensuring seamless vaccination process for people in the state.

“Besides working overnight to ensure proper medical facilities for covid patients by improve health infrastructure, state government is equally focused towards vaccinating people to prevent them from the virus. Despite limited resources, the government has been successful in minimizing the crisis amid the second wave of covid-19 to a large extent,” he said, adding that the vans can now be effectively used to address concerns of such vulnerable sections of the society like elderly, physically challenged among others who face problems in coming to vaccination centre.

Sources said that focus initially will be to target the 45 plus age group to vaccinate through mobile vans. “The usage of mobile vans will largely depend on the availability of the vaccine stocks. For 18 plus, we currently don’t have enough stocks in the state. Hence, we will focus on increasing second dose coverage for the 45 plus age group which needs a special boost,” he said.

On Friday, according to the health department’s records, the state had 1,64,520 doses of vaccine for the 18 plus age group. This includes 62,710 doses of Covaxin, and 1,01,810 Covishield. For other age groups, 7,14,538 total doses of 2,46,360 Covaxin and 4,68,178 Covishield. For the 18 plus age group, the state government is bearing the cost to provide free vaccines from its coffer while Centre is bearing the cost of jabs for the rest of the age groups.