Even though clarity and further details are yet to come from the state, civic body says it wants to be ready to roll out the vaccination drive for everyone above 18 years whenever it is launched in the city
People get vaccinated against COVID-19 at Nair hospital on Tuesday. Pic/Ashish Raje
Even as around 50 vaccination centres are closed after running out of stock and while the city awaits the next consignment of COVID-19 vaccines, the BMC has started the planning for the implementation of the next phase, starting May 1.
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Meanwhile, The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to increase the number of vaccination centres across the city to accommodate beneficiaries aged above 18. The central government had on Monday announced that every adult will now be eligible for vaccination starting next month.
Aiming for 100 centres: BMC
However, several doubts, such as whether or not the next phase will start on May 1 and whether the vaccines will have to be procured directly or will be given by the state, remain unclear.
The BMC will get clarity once the state government issues a directive, but it does not want to wait till then to make the necessary preparations, said officials.
The plan is to raise the numbers of vaccination centres, including government and civic-run hospitals and central government hospitals, to at least 100 from 49 at present. Once the procurement of the vaccines is allowed by the state and is available in the open market, the government and civic-run hospitals will look at increasing their manpower to vaccinate as many beneficiaries as possible.
The BMC also wants the industrial sectors and big business houses to conduct their own vaccination drives by coordinating with private hospitals. It will be pushing for the same so that the majority of people can be vaccinated in a proper manner.
4 centres in each ward
Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner, said, “We are looking at increasing the number of vaccination centres by at least two each on the east and west side of each of the 24 wards. These will be government centres.”
In the meantime, the city continues to struggle with the shortage of vaccines. On Tuesday, 49 vaccination centres were non-operational and out of these 38 were private, six were civic-run and five were state government centres. The situation was so severe that many centres had to turn away beneficiaries who had come for their second dose.
However, Kakani said that the BMC was expecting a consignment of vaccine doses on Tuesday night, and if enough doses are made available then the drive should resume smoothly across all the centres again.
5 cases of side effects
A total of 39,522 beneficiaries, including senior citizens, people aged 45 and above, healthcare and frontline workers, were inoculated against the novel Coronavirus between the second shift on Monday and the first shift on Tuesday.
Out of the 39,522 beneficiaries, 15,040 were senior citizens, 19,716 were aged 45 and above, 1,266 healthcare workers and 3,500 frontline workers. About five cases of adverse reactions were reported across the city. So far, a total of 20,43,898 beneficiaries have been vaccinated in the city.
Bhagwati hospital hit by doctors’ flash strike
Bhagwati hospital, which was recently in news for shifting COVID-19 patients to other medical institutions due to shortage of oxygen, faced another setback on Tuesday when doctors went on a flash strike on being threatened by a local corporator. A local Shiv Sena corporator first questioned the doctors for not admitting her patient. But when the doctors said the patient was fine, she threatened to get them sacked. A doctor said, “ Her patient was given good care. But she threatened us that we would lose our jobs and she wanted us to apologise, but we had done nothing wrong. That’s why we went on a flash strike.” After a written complaint, the matter was resolved and the doctors returned to work Shantaram Kawde, medical superintendent of the hospital, said there was no strike or any sort of problem at the hospital.
49
No. of vaccination centres shut on Tuesday
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