Take vaccine on assigned date, or wait till end of drive: Mumbai civic body

The civic body estimates it will take more than a month to complete the inoculation process for HCWs in the city.

Registered healthcare workers (HCWs) who do not show up on their first assigned date of vaccination will be given a second chance to be vaccinated, but they will have to wait till the end of the inoculation drive, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said on Monday. The civic body estimates it will take more than a month to complete the inoculation process for HCWs in the city.

Healthcare workers wait in an observation room at Ghodbunder Road in Thane after receiving the Covid-19 vaccine. (HT FILE)

On January 16, which was the first day of the vaccination drive, BMC had set a target of immunising 4,000 HCWs, of which only 1,926 HCWs were vaccinated. Part of the reason for the shortfall was that the Covid vaccine intelligence network (CoWIN) app, which notified HCWs with details of where they can receive the shot, had malfunctioned. CoWIN has been developed by the Centre to monitor vaccine delivery.

“The Central government is working to sort out the issue. Once we are able to send messages on time, the rate of turnout for HCWs will increase further,” said Suresh Kakani, additional commissioner, BMC.

Civic officials said those who fail to show up on the designated date for vaccination would be given a second date since it may be impractical to expect 100% turnout on every day of the inoculation drive. “We cannot include the names of HCWs in the corresponding list of beneficiaries since it may lead to confusion. So they will again be given the next date of immunisation after the completion of the programme’s first phase. We therefore suggest that HCWs take the vaccine shot in the first round without missing the registered date,” said Dr Mangala Gomare, executive health officer, BMC.

In Mumbai, 136,000 HCWs have registered on CoWIN for vaccination. BMC’s original plan entailed inoculating 12,000 HCWs daily, thereby completing the process in 15 days. However, following new directives from the Union health ministry, the civic body said it would need more than a month to immunise all HCWs.

“We have to follow the Central government’s instruction to immunise 4,000 HCWs for four days a week. Additionally, there will be a backlog of defaulter HCWs who will be given other dates for vaccination. This has certainly extended the expected time period of the vaccination process,” said Kakani.

At present, with the first batch of assigned vaccines from the Centre, BMC has set itself a target of vaccinating 50,000 to 65,000 beneficiaries. BMC received 139,500 units of Covishield in the second week of January, which can inoculate around 70,000 people.

“We have to use both dosages from the same batch of vaccines. So we have to keep the remaining vaccines for the second dosage which will be given 28 days after the first dosage. At present, we have kept a target to vaccinate 50,000 HCWs,” said Dr Gomare.

Kakani said the civic body would only be able to estimate how long it would take to vaccinate Mumbai’s population of approximately 20 million people after the inoculation process has been smoothened out.