PUNE:
Pune district registered a slow start to the roll-out of the second dose of vaccination drive against Covid-19 on Monday, with many vaccination sites registering a dismal turn out of beneficiaries for the second jab, according to the data provided by health officials till late afternoon.
Many private hospitals had to hold back the second dose administration as the session site for the second dose could not get activated on the
CoWin app at these hospitals.
On January 16, 1802 beneficiaries had taken the first jab against the target of 3100 in Pune district registering a 58% turn out and most of the process was carried out offline due to technical glitches.
The delayed data entries and delayed intimation or the alert for the second jab only slowed down the process on Monday_ the first day of the second dose jab, stated health officials.
At many of the sites the beneficiaries had to be personally called by the centre heads of the 31 sites that were operational on January 16.
Jitendra Oswal, deputy medical director of Bharati hospital said that their staff was sitting idle for most part of the day as the second dose allotment feature did not reflect on the CoWIN app. " A total of 50 of our own healthcare staff who took the shot on January 16 were expected to get the second shot today. But none of them could get it due to the app-related issues." he said.
Medical Expert Raj Kodre who supervised the Noble hospital vaccination site also echoed the same concern. "Like Saturday, the feature of second dose allotment didn't reflect on the CoWIN again on Monday," he said.
State immunisation officer DN Patil told TOI that they have already intimated the central government regarding the glitches in the app. However, the beneficiaries can come in the coming days too as it has to be administered any time between four and six weeks.
The first dose of vaccination for healthcare workers has to be completed by February 20 while second dose administration has to be completed by March end, while for frontline workers the first dose has to be completed by March 15, according to the government guidelines.
'We were expecting these technical glitches as we experienced the same on the first day of the vaccination too where many of our sites had to carry out the entire process offline. So these beneficiaries who were registered offline, their data was later fed to the system but their names were not reflected in spite of their digital certificate being generated. However, these are technical issues and it is being sorted out and for the initial days we will be personally calling the beneficiaries for the second dose based on the list generated," shared Patil.
Meanwhile, Deputy director of health services Pune region Dr Sanjay Deshmukh said that he has directed all the session sites incharge to ready the list and call the beneficiaries the previous day itself for the next two to three days and note down the time they would come to take the jab to avoid any confusion.
The two vaccines that have been cleared for use – Covishield and
Covaxin – require the two doses to be given 28 days apart.