The vaccination drive against Covid-19 picked up further momentum in Delhi as 1,856 healthcare workers, who had received their first shots on day one of the exercise four weeks ago, turned up to get their second dose today.

However, the turnout for the second dose was about 43 per cent only. Under the nationwide mega Covid vaccination drive launched on 16 January, a total of 4,319 health workers (53 per cent of the then targeted figure of 8,117) were administered the shots at 81 centres across the city on day one.

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The second dose is to given to a beneficiary after a gap of 28 days. Today, altogether 13,768 beneficiaries received the Covid jabs, even as the administering of the second dose began for healthcare workers who had received the first jab 28 days ago, a senior official said.

“Out of the total number of healthcare workers, 1,856 received second dose today and 3,530 got the first jab. Also, 8,382 frontline workers also got their first shots today,” he said.

The number of centres where vaccination was carried out yesterday stood at 257 with a turnout of about 57 per cent, as over 14,800 people received the Covid shots in the national caital during the fourth week of the inoculation drive.

The second dose delivery began at LNJP Hospital as well and 25 people received the second shots, a senior official at the facility said, adding that a total of 137 persons were vaccinated there on Saturday.

Thirty-two healthcare workers were vaccinated on 16 January at LNJP Hospital, from where Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had officially started the drive.

A senior doctor at Centre for Chest and Respiratory Illness, and other healthcare workers at the BLK Super Speciality Hospital also received second shots today, a spokesperson of the hospital said.

A senior doctor at Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital said, “110 people got vaccinated in total, out of whom five beneficiaries were those who got their second shots today”.

Meanwhile, Delhi today recorded 126 fresh coronavirus cases and no Covidlinked death, while the positivity rate stood at 0.21 per cent, according to the latest health bulletin issued by the Delhi government’s health department. This was the second time this month when the singleday Covid fatality count was stated to be zero.

On 9 February, no fatality from coronavirus was registered in the national capital after a gap of nearly nine months. Today’s fresh Covid cases were detected out of 60,876 tests conducted the previous day, which included 38,921 RTPCR tests and 21,955 rapid antigen tests, the health bulletin said.

These cases pushed the city’s coronavirus infection tally to 6,36,796 while its Covid death toll stood at 10,889. The national capital’s active cases tally dropped to 1,041 from yesterday’s 1,053, the bulletin stated.

Delhi had yesterday recorded 141 Covid cases and 3 deaths, while its positivity rate was 0.22 per cent.

(With PTI inputs)