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Vaccination drive: Better turnout in rural areas of Pune district than city
PUNE On the third day of phase one drive on Wednesday more beneficiaries were vaccinated in rural Pune as compared to the city area
PUNE On the third day of phase one drive on Wednesday more beneficiaries were vaccinated in rural Pune as compared to the city area.
According to the district health office, 184 beneficiaries were vaccinated in Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) out of the targeted 600 healthcare workers, while in Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) 213 were vaccinated out of the targeted 800 beneficiaries.
In rural Pune, 958 workers were vaccinated out of the targeted 1,500 workers.
As many as 30.66 per cent were vaccinated in Pune city, while 60 per cent were vaccinated in the rural area.
For the first three days of the vaccination drive, Pune rural has reported a higher percentage of more than 60 per cent, than the city areas both from PMC and PCMC.
The civic authorities have blamed glitches in Co-Win app for low turnout in city area because of which late messages are being sent to the beneficiaries.
Dr Bhagwan Pawar, district health officer, said, “We are trying to get every beneficiary targeted to be vaccinated on the same day. We do design the session two days prior to the vaccination so that the messages reach the beneficiaries well in advance so that they reach the site on time. For Friday we will plan the session Wednesday night itself so that the portal sends the message and the beneficiaries can reach the site on time and plan the day accordingly since they are all healthcare workers.”
Dr Ashish Bharti, PMC health chief, said, “The reason for the low turnout is due to the software glitches because of which the messages are reaching the beneficiaries late. The software sends the messages based on random selection and on Wednesday the messages were sent too late.”
“The five vaccination centres started functioning after 10am which resulted in only 184 beneficiaries being vaccinated. Once the messages reach the beneficiaries after 10 am it is difficult for the beneficiary to report to the site. This app cannot be controlled by us in any way,” he said.
“It would be difficult to say if there is any hesitancy because this is a voluntary vaccination process and when we say whether we need counselling or not then these are our own healthcare workers. We can do the counselling for the general public, but the reason for low turnout is purely technical,” he said.
The PMC which had eight vaccination centres on Saturday, January 16, and had targeted to vaccinate 800 beneficiaries, on Monday and Tuesday reduced three private hospitals and brought down the centres to five with six sites by adding an additional site at its own Kamala Nehru hospital.
Rubal Agarwal, additional municipal commissioner, had said that the Covid vaccination at private hospitals was shut because there were some problems in private hospital site creation.
On Tuesday a total of 2,900 beneficiaries were to be vaccinated out of which only 47% or 1,355 were vaccinated of which 958 (64%) were from Pune rural, 184 (31%) from Pune city and 213 (27%) from PCMC. The district office reported only one minor adverse effect through the day at New Bhosari Hospital in the PCMC area.
No vaccination drive today
Dr Ashish Bharti, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) health chief, said, that there would be no Covid-19 vaccination on Thursday and on Friday and Saturday the drive will continue.
“There is no further instruction on which days the vaccination would take place for the next week. The uncertainty on the vaccination days is also leading to a lower turnout,” he said.
