Mumbai: Door-to-door Covid vaccination trial run today

The Mumbai civic body has identified 4,488 bed-ridden citizens whom it will vaccinate at their homes.

Its door-to-door vaccination will start on a pilot basis from Friday in the K/East ward, corresponding to the Andheri (East) area, said the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Thursday.

This trial will help the civic body improve the drive when it kick-starts across Mumbai in the first week of August.

Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner in-charge of BMC’s public health department said on Thursday, “We chose this area because it has more hospitals, especially the civic-run Seven Hills Hospital. In case of emergency after vaccination, we will be in a better position to rush beneficiaries to this facility.”

“Through this, BMC will able to observe and enhance its procedures, when the drive becomes large-scale across Mumbai,” Kakani added.

Over the past few weeks, the BMC has identified 4,488 beneficiaries across the city who are bed-ridden due to medical, and/or physical conditions. These have been divided into 216 health posts across 24 wards in the city. Each health post will cater to around 15 beneficiaries. Kakani said, “We are trying to identify clusters as well, to avoid wastage. If there is only one beneficiary per building or block, there are chances of wastage of the vial.” A team of three staffers, including a doctor, a nurse and a paramedic, will visit these beneficiaries in their homes. For 30 minutes after vaccination, the team will stay with the beneficiaries for observation. “We have a 30-minute observation period, which is crucial especially in cases where we are going door to door,” Kakani said.

The prime concerns for BMC when doing door-to-door vaccinations is how to manage the 30-minute observation per beneficiary, while covering maximum beneficiaries to ensure an opened vial does not go waste. One vial has 10 doses of the vaccine. In a statement on Thursday, BMC said it will take help from non-governmental organisations as well during the door-to-door vaccination drive.

On Thursday morning, BMC received 180,000 vaccine doses.