With 23 lakh jabs a day, Uttar Pradesh keeps adding records

Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh administered 23 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccine to people across the state in a single day, creating a record of sorts, officials said on Tuesday.

After 29.52 lakh doses on August 3, this is the second highest number of vaccinations undertaken in the state in a single day on Monday, officials said.

With this, Uttar Pradesh became the first state to have more than five crore people who have taken at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

As per CoWin portal update till 11 p.m. on Monday, as many as 23,01,031 doses of the vaccine were administered in the state on the day taking the total number of doses to 5.97 crore.

In Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh's nearest contender, 5.01 crore doses have been administered so far.

Officials at the state health department claimed that nearly 35 per cent of the total eligible population of 14 crore has now taken at least one dose.

Among districts, Lucknow (23.12 lakh) tops the list of total doses administered while Chitrakoot (2.95 lakh) ranks lowest.

Gautam Buddha Nagar, Ghaziabad, Meerut and Gorakhpur are districts where more than 15 lakh doses have been given.

Uttar Pradesh also recorded its lowest ever case of Covid-19 in the past 16 months.

Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad said only 17 persons have tested positive in the past 24 hours while 36 persons recovered from the infection in the same duration.

The official bulletin indicated that the 17 cases were reported from 13 districts while 45 districts saw no new entry.

The daily Covid test positivity rate (TPR) -- the number of positive cases against the total tests done -- came down to 0.01 percent, the lowest in the country.