‘Vaccination to help healthcare workers to deal with Covid wave’

Panaji, Feb 24 (IANS) The second dosage of the Covid-19 vaccine administered to healthcare and frontline workers will help in case Goa needs to deal with a second Covid-19 wave, Dr. Shivavand Bandodkar, the state’s top medical official and dean of the Goa Medical College said on Wednesday.Speaking to reporters at the medical college — the state government’s apex healthcare facility — Bandekar also said that the government standard operating procedures (SOPs) and basic norms like wearing of face masks and social distancing would go a long way in combating a possible increase of infections in the state linked to the new Covid-19 variant.”The second (vaccination) dose has started. No side effect has been reported. Everybody is doing well. They will get immunity in 14 days. If there is a second wave, our healthcare workers are now well equipped to tackle it. This is a big advantage,” Bandekar said.”The mutant version is highly infectious. The infection rate is high, but there are less reports of fatalities. Its treatment, however, is not dissimilar. SOPs should be followed strictly. We should be following them, which we are not right now. We should wear masks and not crowd places,” the official said.The Goa government is mulling over a new strategy to keep infections in Goa down, especially amid a fresh wave of Covid-19 cases in the neighbouring state of Karnataka.Goa reported 57 fresh cases on Tuesday, while the total number of Covid-19 infections reported in the state are 54,648. A total of 788 persons have died in the state after being infected with the deadly virus.–IANSmaya/dpb