Indore: No government update, still precautionary dose for free

Indore (Madhya Pradesh): With no clarity from the government over the free ‘precautionary dose’ drive, city health officials continue to provide the dose for free to citizens.

However, the number of vaccination sites has been decreased by the officials as the ‘third dose’ has been provided only at the government sites and zonal offices of Indore Municipal Corporation.

“We didn’t receive any update on the free vaccination drive, while there’s no update on the CoWIN portal about it. We’ve continued the precautionary dose drive for free till the next update from the government on the portal,” district immunisation officer Dr Tarun Gupta said.

However, the residents’ nonchalant attitude towards free vaccination with the precautionary dose continued in the city as only 16 per cent of the eligible population had taken the dose in the city.

According to the health department’s records, as many as 28 lakh people are eligible for doses in Indore district, that is the adult population, but only 4.82 lakh people have taken the ‘third dose’ so far.

The efforts of the health department and district administration to boost vaccination against Covid-19 through a mega-vaccination drive did not give the expected results even after eight mega-vaccination drives in the past two and a half months.

The officials have also been providing cross-vaccination to people as a precautionary dose as the people can take Corbevax as a precautionary dose even if they took Covaxin or Covishield as the initial two doses. “We’ve administered some of the doses of Corbevax as a precautionary dose and it’s available at the centres, including all IMC zonal offices,” Dr Gupta added.