Response to vaccination low, BMC mulls reducing centers or days for operating these centers

Mumbai With the response to the Covid vaccination reducing drastically, the BMC will soon take a review and either curtail the number of vaccination centres or reduce the number of days per week.

Speaking to the Hindustan Times, Dr Mangala Gomare, the executive health officer of BMC said, “The response to vaccination is very poor. We are soon going to take a review at higher level. We with either have two days in a week for vaccination or reduce the number of vaccination centres . At present, we have nearly 130 vaccination centres which are fully operational.’’

Since the number of beneficiaries have reduced, vials get wasted at times as they have to be utilised the same day after opening. At times, the vaccination centres ask beneficiaries to wait till adequate number of people come before a vial can be opened.

Dr Balkrishna Adsul who heads the Seven Hills covid centre and vaccination facility said, “The response to vaccination is poor and the infection is very mild now. I am told that many of private centres have shut down centres and as manpower has to be deployed and it is expensive to keep so much staff when the response is poor. Now there is no stock of Covishield and we have to use only Covaxin or Corvbevax.’’

According to Gomare, the hospitals run by state medical education department and public health department used their staff for running vaccination centres. “We hired a lot of contractual staff for vaccination. We will have to reduce this staff too,” she said.

Dr Vidya Thakur, director of BMC peripheral hospitals said, “Now a few senior citizens want vaccination. Students going abroad also take vaccines. We ensure that there is always a group of six to seven people so that a vial is not wasted. Last year, we used to get 2000 to 3000 people per centre around the same time.”

BMC records show that on October 29, 2022, 612 persons had taken vaccination. Of this, 123 persons had taken their first dose and 134 had taken second dose, while 355 had taken the precautionary dose.