Vaccination in Mumbai: Defaulters who missed the date will get a chance only after first phase gets over

Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has now decided to vaccinate those registered healthcare workers (HCWs) in the next immunisation date who will miss their first round of the vaccination. Moreover the first phase of immunisation in the city will be completed in a month or more than that. Civic officials said due to technical glitch in the Co-Win application very less number of HCWs had turned to the vaccination centres and moreover now the central government has directed to conduct vaccination drive four days a week with limited number of beneficiaries.

BMC could only inoculate 1,926 of 4,000 HCWs on the day 1 (January 16) of the vaccination drive stating most of the HCWs were informed at the last minutes due to which less than 50 per cent of them came forward to get immunise. “Currently the numbers are less but it will increase gradually once the application start functioning properly through which messages will be send directly to the HCWs just a day or two days before,” said Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner, BMC.

Meanwhile, the defaulters who have missed their day of getting vaccinated will be given another date once the first phase is completed as it will not create any confusion or problem in the ongoing process. “We don’t mind including the names of the beneficiaries who have missed their dates but it will create backlogs as we can only vaccinate 4,000 HCWs at nine centres. So those left will be given a fresh date after the first phase of immunisation,” Kakani said.

So far 1,36,000 HCWs in the city have registered on the Co-WIN application to get immunised and as per the civic body plan, they had decided to inoculate 12,000 HCWs every day following which drive would have been completed within 10 days. But after the new instruction of the Union health ministry, it would take over a month or more to immunise all the HCWs.