The Uttar Pradesh government on Saturday claimed that the strategies chalked out by it against the COVID-19 pandemic had been more successful than of other states and as a result, the state was leading in the vaccination campaign after continuously conducting the most number of Covid tests in the country.

Being the most populous state with a population of more than 23 crore, as many as 4,63,681 doses of Covid vaccine have been administered in the state, placing it at the top in the country.

While 22,643 health workers were given the vaccine shot on January 16, another 1,01,006 were vaccinated on January 22. Another 1,71,198 health workers were administered the vaccine on January 28 and 1,68,834 health workers were given the shot on January 29.

After the vaccination of health workers is completed by February 4, the vaccination of frontline workers will start from February 5. There are eight lakh frontline workers, including policemen, civil defense volunteers, cleanliness workers and staff of the Revenue department. After the vaccination of the frontline workers, those above 50 years of age will be vaccinated after March 25.

Some changes have been made in the centralised Covin portal after the vaccination is gaining momentum in the state. Now, those beneficiaries will be vaccinated who are registered on the portal against the beneficiaries who were absent from the booth on the day of vaccination.

"Till now, an automated message was sent on the mobile phone of the beneficiaries who were registered on the Covin portal and only those were vaccinated whose name was in the list that was issued by the portal," said Dr Manoj Shukla, General Manager (Vaccination), National Health Mission. 

He added that from now on, in place of the absent beneficiaries, those will be vaccinated whose name is registered on the portal and they are present at the booth at the time of vaccination.

According to the statistics, more than 4.5 lakh people have taken consultation on the e-Sanjeevani portal till now and 97.51 per cent people have recovered from the COVID-19 infection. Contact tracing and surveillance have been tremendously successful in breaking the chain of the coronavirus and the surveillance teams have reached out to about 18 crore people in the state.

In addition, more than 1.5 lakh Covid tests are being conducted in the state on a daily basis and by conducting more than 2.75 crore Covid tests till date, UP tops the country.