E-Paper
Poor response from people for taking second Covid dose in Pune
As of May 23, as per PMC, out of the 5.17 lakh people who were pending to take the second dose, 3,790 took the second dose after regular follow-up
PUNE According to Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) health department records, over five lakh people in the city are yet to take the second dose. Despite the new variants being able to escape immunity, experts continue to reiterate that vaccine immunity can reduce severity even as the Sars-CoV-2 virus continues to mutate.
As of May 23, as per Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) health department records, out of the 5.17 lakh people who were pending to take the second dose, 27,058 were contacted, 2,564 could not be contacted and 3,790 took the second dose after regular follow-up. As of May 26, at least 5.12 lakh are yet to take the second dose.
PMC officials have been urging people to get the vaccine as the new variant of BA.4 and BA.5 is known to be faster transmitting variants.
Dr Suryakant Devkar, PMC chief immunisation officer said, “Due to the falling cases of Covid-19 and the ongoing holiday season, the demand for vaccination has gone down, however, we are continuously following up on the pending beneficiaries and we are getting a very poor response on the same. We urge people to take both doses of the vaccine and also the precautionary dose for those who are eligible for the same.”
“As new variants are being reported due to continuous mutation, immunity through infection or vaccination is proving to be effective across the world,” he said.
Dr Devkar added, “To follow up on the issue we contacted the beneficiaries via the phone numbers that they had updated on the CoWin app. However, most of the time the numbers are fake or are not reachable and the ones that are reachable, when we call them, they say that they will get vaccinated or are no longer interested since the number of cases is going down.”
As of January 26, as per the CoWin portal, two lakh people have taken the precautionary dose compared to the 38.5 lakh who have taken the first dose.
