Mumbai: Over 43K people given vax jabs at 120 centres

For the second consecutive day more than 40,000 beneficiaries were vaccinated on Wednesday. According to the vaccine data, 43,234 registered beneficiaries were inoculated at 120 vaccine centres across the city, of which 979 were inoculated with Covaxin.

So far 17,96,686 registered beneficiaries since the vaccination drive started on January 16. Of which 7,02,138, senior citizens have been vaccinated and 5,47,017 above 45 years of age being vaccinated.

Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner said they have plan to take the number higher by increasing the number of vaccination centres in the city over the next few days, “At present, the city has 121 vaccination centres, and the BMC wants to increase the number of beneficiaries to 1 lakh a day,” he said

Kakani said the BMC at present has nearly 2.3 lakh doses of Covishield vaccine and 47,000 doses of the Covaxin. “Even if we keep getting supply at the present pace, we should be able to scale up slowly,” said Kakani.

Senior health officials said vaccination can only prevent disease and deaths, not infection. Moreover the true impact of the vaccination will be seen after a month-and-a-half to two months, as you need to take two doses, and after 15 days of a second dose, antibodies will be produced. “So many of them who are coming in for vaccination probably are already harbouring the virus and also remember that vaccinations do not prevent the infection but they prevent disease, they prevent deaths and they prevent severe diseases so that you do not land up in a hospital or die – that’s the whole purpose of the vaccination,” he said.