A two-day special COVID-19 vaccination camp will be held for teaching and non-teaching staff of schools in Maharashtra's Thane district from Friday.
District Collector Rajesh Narvekar on Thursday said the camp was being organised in keeping with the Centre's directive to vaccinate all school teachers on priority before the Teachers' Day on September 5.
The camp will be held for teaching and non-teaching staff of government as well as private schools at government vaccination centres, he said.
Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Wednesday said more than two crore additional COVID-19 vaccine doses are being made available to states this month and they have been asked to vaccinate all school teachers on priority before the Teachers' Day.
Schools across the country were closed in March last year ahead of a nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of novel coronavirus infection.
The Centre had allowed the reopening of schools as per the COVID-19 situation in October last year. While several states began partial reopening of schools, there was a complete closure again in April when an aggressive second wave of COVID-19 hit the country.
With an improvement in the COVID-19 situation again, several states have begun reopening schools now even as concerns have been expressed over the staff and teachers not being completely vaccinated.
Meanwhile, Thane has added 193 new cases of coronavirus, raising the infection count in the Maharashtra district to 5,50,098, an official said on Thursday.
Besides these new cases reported on Wednesday, eight more people also succumbed to the viral infection, which pushed the death toll in the district to 11,264, he said.
The COVID-19 mortality rate in Thane stood at 2.04 per cent, he added.
In neighbouring Palghar district, the COVID-19 case count has gone up to 1,34,341, while the death toll has reached 3,285, another official said.
