Mumbai: BMC to run 10 vaccination centres in 2 shifts from today

With vaccinations for those above 45 years of age to start from today the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC plans to run 10 centres in two shifts from April 1 onwards As the number of people turning up for vaccinations has been increasing by the day private hospitals had been asked to run their centres 247 but as that has not been happening the civic body plans to increase their intake capacity for vaccinationsAs it is not possible for the BMC to run 24hour services for the drive it has decided that instead of the single shift from 9 am to 5 pm it will now have two shifts from 7 am to 2 pm and 2 pm to 9 pm at 10 centres Sources said the new timings would be implemented in the other centres depending on the turnout over the next couple of daysHowever with the COVID19 caseload increasing BMC hospitals are facing huge staff crunch As more people will be needed to run the vaccination centres the civic body has allowed hospitals to rope in additional staff to increase the inoculation capacity manage queues at centres and maintain social distancingWhile the civic body has claimed that it has enough doses to cater to the increasing demand for vaccination they are expecting an additional 225 lakh doses in the coming days The BMC also aims to increase the number of vaccination centres from the existing 108 to 115 depending on the central governmentrsquos approvalsSpeaking to midday Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani said ldquoWe have allowed some civic hospitals to run in two shifts so that we can cater to all the incoming beneficiaries From Thursday onwards we will be vaccinating those above 45 years of age along with health care workers frontline workers and senior citizensrdquoMeanwhile there has been a dip in the daily turnout for vaccinations which earlier was over 40000 but now has reduced to about 26000 On Wednesday the total turnout was 28421 beneficiaries who were vaccinated at various civic and private centres Meanwhile a total of 1152974 beneficiaries have been inoculated till date out of which 150969 have received both the dosesAccording to available data five adverse effects cases were reported on Monday from among those who took the Covishield jab whereas one adverse effect case was reported with regard to Covaxin While 26805 vaccine doses of Covishield were given 1616 doses of Covaxin were administered However the adverse effects cases were minor ones A total of 111 vaccination centres were operational and 237 units were functioning with a capacity of 23700 on WednesdayThe number of senior citizens who turned up for their first dose on Wednesday was 15220 while 629 took the second dose A total number of 4796 people above the age of 45 years with comorbidities took the first dose while 100 took the second one The number of health care workers who were administered the first dose was 1884 and 622 took the second dose Further the number of frontline workers who took the first dose was 3315 and 1855 took the second dose