Bhubaneswar: Amid spike in covid-19 cases in  Odisha, the administration of a booster or precautionary dosage of Covid-19 vaccine to health and frontline workers, as well as persons aged 60 and above with co-morbidities, began in the state on Monday, officials said

The preventive dose is available to a total of 17,52,838 people in the state. The vaccine programme is being carried out at 1,826 vaccination centres across the state, according to Bijay Panigrahi, the state director of health and family welfare. He said the immunisation campaign is being carried out at 3,116 locations, 1,340 of which are specifically for the vaccination of 15-18-year-olds.

The booster dose is available to 3,53,173 health care employees, 3,52,265 frontline workers, and 10,47,400 people aged 60 and more with comorbidities, according to officials. In the meantime, the state has reported 4,829 additional Covid-19 positive cases in the last 24 hours, with 384 cases in the 0-18 age range.

Khordha district continued to report the most cases (933), followed by Sundergarh (869), Sambalpur (644) and Cuttack (401), Balasore (210), Jharsuguda (189), Mayurbhanj (162), Puri (130), and Bolangir (130). (104). In the last 24 hours, other districts reported less than 100 incidents. With these new cases, the state's total current caseload now stands at 20,560. On Monday, Odisha's daily test positive rate (TPR) was 6.5 percent.

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