No free vaccine if you ignore the first three calls, the civic body has told its employees in a reminder given to all department heads, including those at BEST.
A policeman gets the COVID vaccine at Nair hospital on Monday. Pic/Ashish Raje
No free vaccine if you ignore the first three calls, the civic body has told its employees in a reminder given to all department heads, including those at BEST. This came on the day the administering of the second dose to recipients began. The CoWIN app continues to play spoilsport as many could not be given the second shot owing to technical issues.
ADVERTISEMENT
The civic body has adopted various methods to encourage employees to take the jab, with department heads having been told to take the jab first and share the pictures.
In a meeting of the COVID task force on Monday, Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani instructed nodal officers to make provisions for vaccination in respective departments. The instructions also mentioned providing immunisation to civic employees at centres nearest to their residences.
Vehicles may be arranged for vaccination if there are 10 or more recipients in one department.
On the other hand, CoWIN refused to display names of those who had received the first dose, making their second dose. Vaccinating despite this glitch would have jeopardised their certification. A doctor at a vaccination centre said, “I was among the first few recipients on January 16. But my name did not reflect as ‘Partially Vaccinated’ in the app’s system. Taking the shot as a first-time recipient would mean I’d have to let go of my certificate of full vaccination.”
Kakani told mid-day, “Yes, there were some technical issues. The central government has been informed of them. We are, however, not stopping the drive for the second dose and are calling beneficiaries and vaccinating those can be inoculated.” When asked about the three-opportunities rule, he said, “It is one of the rules we brought to the notice of the beneficiaries.”
Vaccination status
The civic body operated 104 units across the 22 vaccination centres. So far, 1,19,410 beneficiaries have been inoculated. The BMC expected a turnout of 10,400 health and frontline workers out of which, 5,203 turned up on Monday, a 71 per cent turnout. There were four cases of minor adverse effects reported. The beneficiaries were allowed to go home after a 30-minute observation. Of the 1,593 health workers vaccinated, 71 got the second dose and 3,610 frontline workers got vaccinated.