Shillong, Nov 5 (PTI) Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma Friday asked the authorities concerned to acheive 100 per cent COVID vaccination before Christmas year end.

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He reviewed the vaccination status in the state with deputy commissioners of the districts of the state and directed them to intensify the vaccination drive, officials said.

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Sangma asked the adminsitrations of the districts to try and achieve total vaccination in the state before Christmas as envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his recent virtual review of the COVID situation with the chief ministers. He also set the target of nine lakh vaccinations in the state in the next 40 days, a CMO statement said.

“We must remember the times. We had multiple deaths and inadequate facilities to handle the cases. We must use that experience to intensify our efforts to save lives,” it quoted Sangma.

“We must assume that the third wave (of coronavirus) is coming, this should be our motivation to work on ways to save lives through vaccination,” he added.

The director of health services Aman War said that till date 17.77 lakh doses of the vaccine have been administered in the state. Over 6.68 lakh have availed both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and 11.09 lakh have taken the first jab.

He said there are 391 active COVID-19 cases in the state at present and 1456 people have died due to the infectious disease accounting for case fatality rate of 1.74%.

According to the health official, 11.58 lakh people have been tested for the contagion so far and 83,763 of them have tested positive.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)