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Boosters for all begin, 10k under 60 get jabs
Government officials said they had expected a slow start to the latest phase of the vaccination drive on account of the first day being a weekend as well as coinciding with the festival of Ram Navmi.
India started offering booster doses of Covid-19 vaccine to people between the age of 18 and 60 years as the latest phase of the country’s immunisation drive kicked off on Sunday, even as the first day saw a relatively slow start with only around 10,000 beneficiaries in this age group having taken the third shot till 5.30pm, according to government data accessed by HT.
Government officials said they had expected a slow start to the latest phase of the vaccination drive on account of the first day being a weekend as well as coinciding with the festival of Ram Navmi.
“The precaution dose for 18 plus category is very much live, even though the numbers may be very much negligible because of it being Sunday, wherein the overall number of vaccinations today have been just around 200,000,” said a senior health ministry official, who did not wish to be identified.
Due to the nine-month gap required between the second and third doses, the drive is expected to be relatively slow the first few weeks as it will initially only cover people aged 45 and above, and only those in the 18-45 age group that received a shot of Covaxin, which has a smaller dose gap compared to Covishield.
Till late Sunday evening, health ministry’s CoWIN dashboard, which tracks India’s vaccination numbers, contained no separate classification of booster shots among people between the age of 18 and 60 years.
But according to government data accessed by HT, a total of 9,496 booster shots were administered among the 18-60 years age group till 5.30pm. Of these, 2,517 were among those aged 18-45 years, and 6,979 doses were among persons aged 45-60 years.
In the 60-plus category, 11,218 precaution doses were administered till 10.30pm on Sunday as per CoWIN dashboard, and among the health care and frontline workers, 14,809 total precaution doses were given.
Among precaution doses administered to those aged 18 and 60, 5,998 were of Covishield and 3,498 belonged to Covaxin. Incidentally, in the 18-45 years category, 2,348 persons took Covaxin shot, and 169 took Covishield dose; and in the 45-60 years category, 5,829 took Covisheld and 1,150 were administered Covaxin vaccine.
In total, 228,123 shots of the Covid-19 vaccine were administered across India till 10.30pm on Sunday, which included precaution dose and doses having been administered to children, according to data on CoWIN.
The slow start was visible across nearly all states.
In Delhi, most private hospitals did not offer the third dose to 18-60 category on Sunday owing to confusion related to revised pricing. Apart from Fortis Healthcare in Delhi, most other big corporate hospitals said they would expand the precaution dose for beneficiaries aged 18 and above from Monday. Some of the hospitals even took a break from Covid vaccination and said they would start with revised prices in a day or two.
“After the companies clarified the pricing issue — Covaxin makers did this on Saturday, and the makers of Covishield informed us on Sunday – we expanded vaccination with revised prices,” said a spokesperson for Fortis Healthcare. A spokesperson for Delhi’s Apollo Hospital said the new phase would begin from Monday. A customer care official at Delhi’s Gangaram Hospital said that there was no Covid vaccination being provided for the next few days.
In Bengal, most private hospitals said they will start the latest phase from Monday while some institutions, such as Woodlands Hospital in Kolkata, launched it on Sunday.
In Bihar, fewer than 100 booster shots were administered in the 18-60 age group as most private Covid vaccination centres were shut on Sunday. “We administered 40 booster doses of Covishield to beneficiaries in the 18-60 years age group on Sunday,” said Santosh Kumar, director (administration) of the Ruban Memorial Hospital in Patna.
In Madhya Pradesh, state immunisation officer Santosh Shukla said 697 precautionary doses were administered in the state on Sunday. In Uttarakhand, nodal officer for Covid-19 vaccination Kuldeep Singh Martoliya, said only three private facilities in Dehradun were offering booster shots under the new phase on Sunday.
Maharashtra, too, saw a relatively muted response as only a handful of private hospitals were open. Among those that were in Mumbai, such as the PD Hinduja hospital, Joy Chakraborty, COO said that till 4pm, they witnessed 200 people coming for shots in the new category.
Private hospitals have been largely concerned about their pending stock of vaccines.
On Sunday afternoon, Serum Institute of India issued a statement. “Keeping in line with the government of India’s directive to allow the precaution dose to all aged above 18 years at private vaccination centres: the price of Covishield has been revised to INR 225 per dose for private hospitals effective from today, 10th April, 2022. All private hospitals are requested to provide Covishield at the revised rates henceforth.”
In a statement a day earlier on Saturday, Covaxin maker, Bharat Biotech, also said, “…the price differential with any existing stocks of Covaxin in private hospitals shall be compensated in the form of additional doses.”
According to government data, so far about 96% of all 15+ population in the country has received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose while about 83% of 15+ population has received both the doses. At least 23 million precaution doses have been administered to the group that became eligible on January 10.
With inputs from bureaus in Mumbai, Kolkata, Patna, Bhopal and Dehradun
