GB Nagar aims to inoculate left out health workers on Feb 15

NOIDA: Concerned over the lukewarm response to all six sessions of phase 1 of the Covid-19 vaccination, the Gautam Budh Nagar district health department has decided to launch a mop up round on February 15 to cover remaining 10,510 health workers who could not get the vaccine shots

NOIDA: Concerned over the lukewarm response to all six sessions of phase 1 of the Covid-19 vaccination, the Gautam Budh Nagar district health department has decided to launch a mop up round on February 15 to cover remaining 10,510 health workers who could not get the vaccine shots.

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The GB Nagar chief medical officer (CMO), Dr Deepak Ohri, said that the health workers, who missed the jabs in the first phase, will be included in the list of beneficiaries for the mop up round. “As per the instructions issued by the state government, directions have been given to all the centres to open the Co-Win portal for 50 hours (from 10 am on February 8 to 12 pm on February 10), to upload names of the left out health-care workers, so that they could be vaccinated in the mop up round,” he said.

Ohri further said that the failure of potential beneficiaries to get vaccinated in the mop up round will automatically push them to age-appropriate vaccination category. “The second dose of the vaccine is also scheduled to start from February 13 for people who were vaccinated on January 16 in the first phase,” he said.

It may be noted that after the six sessions for first phase of Covid-19 vaccination that ended on February 5, the overall turnout for the phase in GB Nagar district was nearly 57% as 13,943 health workers took the jabs out of enlisted 24,453 beneficiaries. After the first phase, GB Nagar district has been ranked 68th, out of 75 districts, in the state in terms of the turnout.

When asked about the reasons behind the lukewarm response to the vaccination drive, the CMO said that while some of the beneficiaries remained sceptical about the efficacy of the vaccine, others claimed that they do not need it as their bodies have developed immunity against the virus. “Many clerical and hospital administration staff, besides some medical students, were reported to give the vaccination a miss deliberately as they claimed that since they were never on active Covid-19 duty, they didn’t want to get vaccinated,” he said.

Ohri said that the health department officials are informing the beneficiaries, two days ahead of their stipulated date of vaccination. “We have also informed the departments concerned of the beneficiaries about their presence or absence during the vaccination. We are also trying to improve turnout in coming sessions,” he said.