Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has now decided to vaccinate 10,000 healthcare workers on a daily basis following which they have decided to increase vaccination centres. Earlier they had planned to vaccinate 12,000 per day which they had to reduce to 4,000 on an inaugural day of mass vaccination drive due to technical glitches in the centralised Co-Win application. Officials said the main aim is to complete the first phase in the given time period due to which they have decided to increase the number of beneficiaries to be vaccinated which will further increase to the actual target of 12,000 which was decided.
According to the vaccination data, 33,306 of the 48,791 HCWs have been inoculated with the first dosage of COVISHIELD or COVAXIN, which means so far 68 per cent of the beneficiaries have been vaccinated. However, the civic body has registered around 1.25 lakh of beneficiaries, of which only 33,306 have been vaccinated in the nine sessions of the vaccination drive, which means only 27 per cent of HCWs showed willingness for the mass immunisation drive.
Other frontline workers to start getting vaccination from February first week
The civic body has now decided to vaccinate the other frontline workers from the first week of February along with the healthcare workers. This comes after the central government directed all the state governments to start inoculating the frontline workers simultaneously with HCWs. “So far two lakhs frontline workers have registered at Co-Win for the vaccination drive and from the first week of February will start vaccinating them. Moreover, a dedicated vaccine centre will be set up for the frontline workers to avoid any kind of chaos or confusion at the existing vaccine centres,” said Suresh Kakani, Additional Municipal Commissioner. Frontline workers (FLWs) who will now be vaccinated include personnel from state and central police forces, the armed forces, home guards, and civil defence organisations, and prison staff, disaster management volunteers, and municipal workers, solid waste management workers and Mumbai Fire Brigade
Dr. Mangala Gomare. Executive health officer, BMC said they are in the planning stage of increasing the number of beneficiaries to 10,000 per day so that all registered HCWs should be vaccinated in the given estimated time and those who are left out will be inoculated at the last. “We had to decrease the number of beneficiaries to 4,000 per day from 12,000 which was decided due to technical glitches in the Co-Win app. Following the first four sessions of vaccination, the number of HCWs were below 4,000, but now we are increasing to 10,000 so that all registered HCWs are covered in the first phase,” she said.
Suresh Kakani, Additional Municipal Commissioner said they will also increase the number of vaccination centres in the city to vaccinate 10,000 or more on a daily basis. “The additional vaccination centres will be at four more peripheral hospitals including Bhabha hospital in Kurla, the jumbo Covid-19 facilities at Dahisar, Mulund, and the jumbo facility at Richarson and Cruddas (RC) in Byculla,” he said.
