Mumbai: 50 per cent BEST employees vaccinated for COVID-19 in 2 weeks

People wearing facemasks travel in a BEST bus. File pic

The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking on Tuesday said that 50 per cent of its employees have been vaccinated for COVID-19 and the process for the rest is underway.

"In just a period of two weeks, almost 50 per cent of BEST undertaking employees have been vaccinated. We took a meeting on February 15, 2021 with Additional Municipal Commissioner and BMC officials and as per discussions, we handed over the entire database of all employees and uploaded it together at one go. This helped expedite the process. Once the database was with the BMC, their officials took it ahead and began the process," Dr Anil Kumar Singal, pulmonologist and BEST's chief medical officer said.

"Over 16,000 have already received the vaccine in the past two weeks, and the process for the rest is under process," he added.

The BEST Undertaking has about 33,770 employees on the role as per latest records. In the first week itself, about 7,000 had received the jab. It comprises employees of both the transport and electricity wing.

As per the latest statistics, there has not been a single COVID-19 positive case in BEST Undertaking for the past three days. The BEST's tele-monitoring severity score system monitors the health of COVID-19 patients through five minutes calls periodically, which has made a positive impact on recovery amongst the COVID-19 patients.

BEST employees have been lined up for vaccination since they have been frontline workers in Mumbai as it is the only public transport undertaking in the city that has been working without a break since the lockdown began in March 2020.