Free booster shots: Housing societies request BMC to arrange camps

Jatin Gangar, treasurer of a housing society in Parel said, “It is a good initiative and we want to take the maximum benefit of the opportunity. Our society is small with 25 families.”

Mumbai Within 24 hours of the Centre announcing free booster shots for citizens between the 18-60 age group for 75 days from July 15, the ward offices of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) have started receiving requests from residential housing societies to hold vaccination camps in their premises. On Thursday, the state cabinet also decided to implement Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav which will kickstart from July 15.

With 200 flats, representatives of Radhika Residency, Chembur have approached the local BMC ward office medical officer to enquire on how to go about holding the vaccination camp on their premises (HT Photo)

Jatin Gangar, treasurer of a housing society in Parel said, “It is a good initiative and we want to take the maximum benefit of the opportunity. Our society is small with 25 families. We want the vaccination camp to be held on a weekend as many of the members are working on the weekdays.”

He said they are also planning to approach nearby housing societies so that in the vaccination camp, maximum people can be benefited under a single roof. “Ours is a very small society. A vaccination camp just for us may not be feasible. We are therefore planning to speak to all the housing societies around us on the weekend and then make the proposal to the BMC ward office for the vaccination camp,” he added.

With 200 flats, representatives of Radhika Residency, Chembur have approached the local BMC ward office medical officer to enquire on how to go about holding the vaccination camp on their premises.

“We have close to 100 members in the age group of 18-60 and most of them have not taken the booster dose for various reasons. As soon as we heard the announcement of free booster dose for 18-60, we decided to approach BMC to help us arrange a vaccination camp in our society. We have written an email for the same and are awaiting their response,” said Nandkumar Rane, committee member of the society and special executive officer, government of Maharashtra. He said they will prefer a weekend camp as most of the members are working on the weekdays. “Members prefer to take the vaccine and rest on the weekend,” said Rane. A BMC health official said there are many queries trickling in since the announcement has been made. “We saw such responses for dose 1 and dose 2 when housing societies volunteered and held vaccination camps. We hope in the coming days, we will get more responses. A booster dose is required to fight the Covid-19 virus spread,” said the BMC health official.

The booster dose for the 18-60 age group was started on April 10 in private vaccination centres. Since then only 3,25,085 beneficiaries in this age group have taken the booster dose. Mumbai has an estimated 92.3 lakh population above 18-60.

On average, Mumbai sees close to 2000 booster dose uptake in the 18-60 age group of which only one-third of uptake is from the 45-60 age group.

Ravi Duggal, a public health researcher and activist said vaccines are for the public good and should be given free of cost. “Why give it free for just 75 days? Vaccines should be given free to all age groups as it is for the larger good,” he said.

BMC said on the day 1 (July 15) of free booster dose for 18-60, they will wait for the response before increasing the number of vaccination centres.

“We have 104 public vaccination centres out of which 87 are run by BMC. We will see the response in the next few days and accordingly increase the centres,” said the BMC health official. He said the BMC has enough stock of both Covishield and Covaxin and if required, will get the stock from the state.

“We have 27 lakhs doses of Covishield, that will expire in the second week of September and 35 lakh doses of Covaxin, that will expire in December. We have enough stock for now but with the booster dose made free for 18-60 for 75 days, we will review the situation in the next few days,” said Dr Sachin Desai, Dr Sachin Desai, state immunisation officer. According to the state health official, the state sees 60,000 vaccinations in a day on average.