At a vaccination centre in Mumbai. (Express File) An estimated 3.75 lakh to 4 lakh frontline workers will get immunised in the second phase of vaccination in Mumbai starting Tuesday. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has so far registered 2 lakh frontline workers on Co-WIN software. Across the state, an estimated 20 lakh frontline workers will be vaccinated.
From Tuesday, 15 hospitals and jumbo facilities will be roped in with 100 vaccinators to immunise health workers and frontline workers in Mumbai. Additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani said they aim to immunise 10,000 people a day in the city. Frontline workers will not be directed towards JJ hospital, where Covaxin is being administered. “We have been told that JJ centre is only for those willing to get Covaxin and for JJ hospital staff. We will be directing all frontline workers to vaccination centres with Covishield shots,” Kakani said.
A civic employee, requesting anonymity, said since BMC is headquartered near CST station and is closest to JJ hospital, several had raised concerns whether they will be asked to administer Covaxin.
BMC officials said they have stock of 2.20 lakh vaccine doses, including Covishield and Covaxin, which will be used for both health workers and frontline workers. Until now this stock was adequate only for health workers. Instead of utilising the existing dosages to give two shots to health workers, they will be used to give the first shots to health workers and frontline workers. “We expect more stock in the next eight-10 days based on data of frontline workers we upload on Co-WIN,” Kakani said.
Frontline workers will include municipal staffers, police, defence, security guards, solid waste management workers, revenue department staff, and BEST drivers and conductors.
So far Mumbai has vaccinated over 47,393 health workers. Across the state over 3 lakh health workers have been immunised with first shot.
State officials said they were taken by surprise by the Centre’s decision to begin phase two of vaccination. Maharashtra has a stock of over 18 lakh doses of which 3.10 lakh have been utilised. Districts have been directed to continue uploading data of frontline workers and initiate immunisation simultaneously for those already registered. The state has over 2 lakh police officers who will be part of immunisation.
N Ramaswamy, director of National Health Mission, Maharashtra, said on Tuesday 531 centres will target to immunise 53,100 health workers and front line workers across state.
Meanwhile at least 100 private hospitals in the city have shown interest in holding vaccination camps in their premises to ease the process of immunisation for private health workers attached with these hospitals. Civic officials said each hospital will be inspected to assess whether it has provision to vaccinate and has space to keep recipients under observation for half an hour. So far no private hospital has been selected to hold vaccination drives. Officials said in a few days a decision on selecting few private hospitals as vaccination camps will be taken.