Over 17,000 Covid-19 vaccines given to inmates of 3 Delhi jails, Tihar tops list
Citing the Delhi prisons department, news agency PTI said that of the total vaccines (17,362 doses) administered in the three jails, Tihar was at the top with 11,844 inoculations.
More than 17,000 doses of vaccine against the coronavirus disease have, so far, been administered to inmates of three jails in Delhi - Tihar, Rohini and Mandoli.
Citing the Delhi prisons department, news agency PTI said that of the total vaccines (17,362 doses) administered in the three jails, Tihar was at the top with 11,844 inoculations. As many as 9,028 inmates in Tihar have received their first doses, while the remaining 2,816 are fully vaccinated.
Over 1,000 inmates of Rohini Jail have been vaccinated so far, of whom 885 have received their first dose and 188 have received both the shots.
In Mandoli jail, nearly 2,800 prisoners have been vaccinated with the first dose and 1,651 inmates are fully inoculated.
The Delhi prisons department had started the vaccination drive to contain the spread of the virus for inmates above the age of 45 on March 18 this year.
After the Union government opened the campaign for all adults from May 1, the prisons department started administering doses to inmates from May 18.
Since March this year, 383 cases of Covid-19 have been reported in these jails. Of these cases, eight inmates passed away due to related complications.
As many as 225 prison staff personnel had also tested positive for the virus during the same period. However, no deaths have been reported among them.
The prisons department has been on an alert since the pandemic hit last year and has taken a number of measures to ensure the virtual disease does not spread beyond control. A senior jail official told PTI more than 4,000 inmates were released from Tihar Rohini and Mandoli jails this year.
“We started the process of releasing inmates from the second week of May. Around 3,800 undertrials were released on interim bail and around 840 convicts were released on emergency parole,” he said.
Last year, 5,500 undertrials and 1,184 convicts were released on interim bail and emergency parole in Delhi.
Meanwhile, nearly 20 million vaccines have been administered so far across the national capital. Of these, 71,04,092 beneficiaries are fully vaccinated, while 1,28,68,171 have received only one dose. As many as 63,917 beneficiaries were inoculated in the last 24 hours.
Forty more people tested positive for Covid-19 on Saturday which took the caseload to 1,439,566, according to the health department's bulletin.
(With PTI inputs)