Maharashtra: 3.45 lakh frontline workers get covid vaccine shot

A total of 3.45 healthcare workers in Maharashtra have received the coronavirus vaccine so far. Of these, as many as 3585 healthcare workers received the Covaxin (made by Bharat Biotech) vaccine shot across six centres in the state. The highest numbers are at Amravati (1101) followed by Nagpur (703)and Pune (558).

Dr D N Patil, state immunization officer told The Indian Express on Thursday that there are six centres in the state where Covaxin shots are being administered including Mumbai, Solapur and Aurangabad. “We have already increased the number of centres from 511 to 555 and will step it up further,” he said adding that there have been no major adverse events related to the vaccination.

According to Dr Sanjay Deshmukh, Deputy Director, Pune region – that includes Pune, Solapur and Satara districts – a total of 250 frontline workers were given the vaccine shot on Wednesday.

Mumbai, Thane and Pune are among the top districts with the maximum number of health care workers getting vaccinated. Till date, the total number of health care workers who got the shot in the three top districts included – 38,444 in Mumbai Suburban, 34,247 in Thane and 32,468 in Pune.

Meanwhile, a survey conducted by LocalCircles has found that there is a varying degree of enthusiasm that has been observed amongst citizens ever since the inoculation of two vaccines—Covishield and Covaxin—commenced on January 16. “We conducted a survey last week and received over 25,000 responses from citizens located in 289 districts of India. Despite close to 5 million healthcare workers getting vaccinated in 2 weeks, 58% citizens remain hesitant to take the COVID-19 vaccine immediately,” said Sachin Taparia, founder of LocalCircles, a community social media platform enabling citizens and small businesses to escalate issues for policy and enforcement intervention.

“Our earlier vaccine hesitancy survey released on January 27 indicated that 60% of citizens were still hesitant to COVID-19 vaccine immediately. Vaccination hesitancy is reducing week over week with a 16% drop in hesitancy within the last month. However, the hesitancy level of 58% is still quite high and the polls in this study indicate that one sure-shot way of reducing the vaccine hesitancy is leaders in Central and State Governments, MPs and MLAs taking the vaccine,” Taparia said.