Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami asked the state health department on Thursday to launch a drive to administer booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines to the beneficiaries for effectively controlling the pandemic. He asked officials of the department to start holding camps to administer booster doses to people from Friday.

Awareness about the importance of the booster dose should be raised and people should be encouraged to get vaccinated against the viral disease, Dhami said, adding that if fresh cases are reported, the samples should be sent for genome sequencing. The Covid control rooms should be activated in all the districts, he said.

Dhami issued the instructions while chairing a high-level meeting of health department officials to discuss steps to curb the spread of the virus. Uttarakhand Health Minister Dhan Singh Rawat joined the meeting virtually and emphasised the importance of booster doses.

Held at the secretariat, the meeting was also attended by Chief Secretary S S Sandhu, Director General of Police (DGP) Ashok Kumar and Additional Chief Secretary Radha Raturi. The meeting was convened in the backdrop of a recent spurt in the number of Covid cases in several countries, including China. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote to all the states and Union territories on Tuesday, putting an emphasis on the whole genome-sequencing of positive Covid cases to track new variants of the virus.?