Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Amid Covid scare, the health department officials have seen a surge in demand for the “precaution dose” at least by 10 times on Thursday.
According to officials, they were administering only about 15-20 doses daily for the last several days but the number shot up to 250 on Thursday.
“We were also surprised to see the sudden rise in demand of “precaution dose.” It is following the Covid scare and surge in cases in several countries and the threat of increasing cases in our country as well,” immunization officer Dr Tarun Gupta said.
However, only 14.85 per cent of total beneficiaries have taken the precaution dose in the city as denizens didn’t show any response to the precaution doses.
“We have vaccinated over 4.89 lakh people with the precaution dose so far in the city. Over 34 lakh people had taken the first dose in the city and over 32 lakh people were administered the second dose,” Dr Gupta said.
He added that they have increased the number of vaccination sites from three to 13 in the city while three sites are being run at private vaccination centres. However, the health department has run out of stock for Covishield and Corbevax.
“We only have 25,000 doses of Covaxin in the city. We had raised the demand for at least 5,000 doses of Corbevax and Covishield with the state in November but didn’t receive it yet. However, we are also not getting any response from the people for the same.
Samples to be sent to Bhopal for sequencing
While there is no government facility in Indore to conduct genome sequencing of the Covid samples to study the prevalent variant as the machine installation at MGM Medical College would take a month’s time, health authorities have asked the city officials to send all positive samples to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhopal for genome sequencing.
Waiting for directions
The Union government has released various advisories for conducting random sampling of people coming from other countries and also to increase testing and tracking, officials of the health department in Indore are waiting for directions from the state to take action. “We also received the advisories from the Centre but didn’t get any direction from the state.
We will act as per the directions from the officials,” chief medical and health officer, Dr BS Saitya, told the media.
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