Covid-19 vaccination resumes in Mumbai, Pune after two days

After a gap of two days, the Covid-19 vaccination drive resumed in Mumbai and Pune on Tuesday morning, but unlike the first day, there was hardly any rush of beneficiaries for taking jabs in the metropolis.

A doctor at a vaccination centre in Mumbai said the response was slow in the morning, but the process was gradually picking up.

The inoculation drive resumed at nine centres in Mumbai and 28 centres in the neighbouring Pune district, officials said.

The Maharashtra government had suspended the inoculation process on Sunday and Monday due to some problems in the Co-WIN app, created by the Centre for managing registration for the vaccination.

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On the first day of the vaccination on Saturday, only 1,923 out of 4,000 registered beneficiaries got the doses in Mumbai, as per the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

On Tuesday, the vaccination process started around 9 am at all the centres in Mumbai, as per BMC officials.

However, unlike Saturday, there was hardly any rush of registered beneficiaries at the vaccination centres.

The waiting room at a vaccination centre in the civic-run KEM Hospital was almost empty at around 10.30 am.

"Only 15 to 20 people have come since the start of the process today," a staffer at the vaccination centre said.

One or two registered beneficiaries are coming at a gap of 5 to 10 minutes, he said.

"The response was slow in the morning, but it is slowly picking up," a doctor at the facility said, adding that the centre will remain open till 5 pm.

Some health care workers, who were asked to go to the KEM Hospital for inoculation, told PTI that they received calls for vaccination from the BMC's war room between 8.30 pm and 11.30 pm on Monday.

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Besides, some registered beneficiaries also said they either did not receive any message, while a few said they received the message early Tuesday morning.

"I got a call for vaccination at 11.30 pm on Monday, which was very late, but haven't received any message," said a health care worker from the KEM Hospital's microbiology department, who came to take the vaccine shot.

In Pune, the vaccination resumed at 28 out of the 31 centres on Tuesday, a senior district health official said.

There are 31 vaccination centres in the district- eight each in Pune city and Pimpri-Chinchwad civic limits and 15 in rural areas.

Pune Municipal Corporation's health chief Dr Ashish Bharti said the vaccination could not be started at three centres due to some technical issues.

"We are trying to rectify the issues at the three centres. The vaccination at the remaining five centres in the city started at 10 am," he said.

He also said the administration is trying to conduct more vaccinations than the designated target of 100 per day at bigger medical facilities in Pune, like the Sassoon Hospital and the Kamla Nehru Hospital.

On the first day of the inoculation on Saturday, a total of 1,802 beneficiaries out of the targeted 3,100 were given vaccine doses in Pune.

Over 300 people had later complained of minor side- effects, as per the district administration.