E-Paper
No hesitancy, only 0.1% may not take 2nd jab: Govt study
A senior health department official said that this indicates there is negligible vaccine hesitancy among people in Delhi, unlike the situation in other smaller states.
Only about 0.1% of the people eligible for the second dose of Covid-19 vaccination have refused to take the shot, citing reasons like severe side-effects from the first dose and migration to other states, a Delhi government analysis has shown.
A senior health department official said that this indicates there is negligible vaccine hesitancy among people in Delhi, unlike the situation in other smaller states.
“A very small portion of the population has refused second doses citing reasons including severe side effects from the first vaccination dose and migration. When the vaccination programme began, many people from the NCR towns of Noida, Gurgram, Faridabad etc, who were not finding vaccination slots in their states, were coming into Delhi to get their first doses,” said the official.
Delhi has already achieved 100% coverage for the first dose of vaccination, and officials said that they have already administered second doses to around 85% of Delhi residents. Data from government’s Co-Win dashboard showed that Delhi has so far administered 30,078,643 vaccine doses, including 17,103,914 first doses, 12,645,322 second doses and 329,407 precautionary doses administered to those above 60.
The official quoted above said that Delhi has not yet reached “vaccine saturation”, noting that the vaccination drive slowed down over the last few weeks as people were a little wary of coming into vaccine centres “in the middle of Covid peak”.
The official also said that many people tested positive during the fifth wave, requiring them to wait three months before getting their vaccine dose.
“It would be unfair to compare vaccination figures from the initial period with now, because the number of people that need to be covered is now low compared to the initial period when everyone was awaiting their turn. It is natural that after a period, the vaccination numbers will lower,” the official said.
Government officials said that they are continuing with their efforts to set up camps across various parts of the city to increase vaccination coverage. “Vaccination is surely one of the factors why we saw milder infections and comparatively fewer deaths this time. Another reason was the nature of Omicron variant itself, which is characterised by mild infections. Last year, we were just starting off with the vaccination drive and not many people were vaccinated but this time the coverage is good,” said Dr Sanjay Rai, professor (community medicine), All India Institute of Medical Sciences.
