The vaccination programme for COVID-19 in the district started on January 16 at 32 session sites or vaccination centres and in the last two days over 2,000 health workers had taken the jab.
According to the Health Department, there was only one case of adverse effect following inoculation. The officials indicated that the affected health worker has been suffering from chronic hypertension for quite some time and faced some anxiety issues after vaccination, but she is now out of danger.
District COVID-19 Special Officer and Principal of Andhra Medical College P.V. Sudhakar said that the turnout was around 65% at the session sites.
“Among the frontline health workers who turned out for the vaccination drive, about 65% of them were given the jab, around 15% were rejected for being either pregnant women or lactating mothers or having some allergic issues and around 20% did not turn out, probably due to some apprehensions,” he said.
“But our turnout rate is far better than that of USA, where it is around 35%,” said Dr. Sudhakar. The AMC Principal, who was one among the first people to receive the jab, said he didn’t face any side effects in the last 48 hours. The health officials say that there are some issues with the Co-WIN app, which is maintained and monitored by the Union government.
The prime issue in Visakhapatnam district in the last two days, has been repetition of names.
A person who was given the vaccine on the first day found his name on the second or third day also. And these were not just stray cases, they are frequent and numbering close to 25 to 30%.
What is happening is that genuine persons among the health workers are being left out due to the repetition and people who have already taken the vaccine will not take it again. “This is reducing the effective turnout,” said Dr. Sudhakar.
The Health Department suggests that the enrolment part in the app should be decentralised. They feel that the State should be given a login and it should be further decentralised to the district-level. “This can reduce the repetition factor and will also give the opportunity to reschedule those who have missed out,” said a senior doctor from the District Medical and Health Department. “We do not know if this problem is there in other places, but in our district we have been facing this issue. It could be due to wrong feeding of data or wrong use of the app also,” he said.