Vaccination drive in Bardhaman suspended after four AEFI cases

The Covid-19 vaccination drive was on Thursday suspeded in the Bardhaman-Durgapur belt after four persons reported adverse event following immunisation (AEFI).

While no health officials confirmed the incident, sources said the four persons were under observation at a hospital in Durgapur.

Sources said one of them had high blood pressure and the rest had no major health problems. The state Health Department is yet to confirm the reason behind their illness and if there was any co-relation with the vaccination. According to Health Department sources, though the vaccination drive in the state is conducted on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, some centres are administering the vaccine on other days too.

On Wednesday, total 2,000 frontline workers were vaccinated against Tuesday’s 13,693. Sources said the Centre’s CoWIN application was working slow and encountered some glitches.

“The AEFI rate is still less than one in thousand, which is normally expected and prove that the surveillance system is functioning well, and no major side effects were noticed after more than 43,000 doses. This is a huge success and will help us in confidence building… We are likely to receive more vaccine doses,” said an official.

Meanwwhile, West Bengal on Thursday reported 416 coronavirus cases and and nine deaths attributed to the virus. With these, the total caseload reached 5,66,898 and the toll 10,089. As many as 517 Covid patients were discharged in the last 24 hours, taking the total to 5,50,244. The brought down active cases to 6,565 and improved the recovery rate to 97.06 per cent. Total 28,293 samples were tested in the last 24 hours, taking the cumulative figure to 77,51,669