E-Paper
Second dose beneficiaries struggle to get appointment for vaccine in Pune
Senior citizens and those aged 45+, who are waiting for their second dose of Covishield, are having appointments cancelled the day before
PUNE Residents across Pune city have complained that they are unable to book a slot of their second shot of Covishield on the Co-WIN app.
Senior citizens and those aged 45+, who are waiting for their second dose of Covishield are having appointments cancelled the day before.
The PMC has failed to regularly provide real-time information on the availability of the second dose at the respective centres. The Co-WIN app does not show any centres in Pune city.
While earlier the second dose was recommended to be given after four weeks, it has now been extended to six-eight weeks in the case of Covishield.
For maximum efficacy against the virus, experts have recommended that citizens must receive both shots of the vaccine.
Siddharth Shirole, MLA from Shivajinagar, earlier asked the PMC to publish a daily report of the vaccination centres with the type of vaccine available. However, the civic body does not publish a daily list. Shirole said, “I am aware that sr.citizens (&45+) who are awaiting their 2nd dose of COVISHIELD are having their appointments get cancelled the day before. Also that there is no real-time information on availability of second dose of either vaccine. I have once again urged PMC commissioner Vikram Kumar to regularly and accurately publish info of vaccination centres at-least a day in advance, so that citizens can plan, avoid the risk of visiting multiple centres and prevent creating hot-spots at walk-in centres itself.”
However the inconvenience to citizens continues, One Bharati Parashar said, “Vaccination centres in Pune municipal limits are not appearing on CoWin application. The PMC should regularly update the list. I am not able to take an appointment for the second dose due to non-availability of the vaccination centre’s on the list.”
Another Suyash Kulkarni said, “No Covishield slots available for next three weeks on any of the pincodes in Pune. I checked this for the second dose for my senior citizen parents. Whom do we contact?”
Manish Chauhan said, “Vaccines are not properly available in Pune since yesterday. The situation seems to be slightly better in PCMC. People due for a second dose are facing problems in Pune city.”
Dr Vaishali Jadhav, assistant health officer said, “The irregular supply of the vaccine is also an issue. Although we do create session sites in advance for people to book due to shortage of vaccines, they are booked out. Also there are technical issues with the app. Sometimes there are appointments which show that the person has been vaccinated, but in fact they have not. In such a case we ask them to manually register themselves it at our centres.”
A senior PMC officer, requesting anonymity, also said, “On Sunday morning we had only 5,000 doses in the pipeline, as in those already with the hospitals ready to be administered. We got a fresh stock of 35,000 vaccines on Sunday afternoon which we again started distributing. This new stock will last for another two days.”
