Coimbatore: At least 774 people were inoculated at the 25 government centres in the district on Monday, when the second phase of Covid-19 vaccination started in the district. In this phase, senior citizens as well as those aged above 45 with comorbidities are eligible to get vaccinated.
As people couldn’t register on CoWIN app, which developed some technical glitches, hospitals were forced to allow walk-in enrolment. Most private hospitals could not start the vaccination drive on the day, as they were not sure about allowing walk-in registration.
“We were not sure if we had to insist on pre-registration or could allow walk-ins. We also hadn’t received the vaccine doses until noon,” said a private hospital administrator, who didn’t want to be named.
The district had selected 79 private hospital for the drive. Health department officials distributed 7,980 doses of Covishield to them on Monday afternoon. Each hospital received 100 to 200 doses each.
Dr G Ramesh Kumar, deputy director of public health, said the district would receive 81,700 more vaccine doses by Monday night - 77,300 doses of Covishield and 4,400 doses of Covaxin. “With this, we will have 1,01,840 doses of vaccine, including 17,600 doses of Covaxin. Only CMCH and Pollachi district headquarters hospital can administer Covaxin as of now.”
With the Co-WIN app developing glitches, health department officials said, they had called up nodal officers in the 79 private hospitals and instructed them to permit walk-ins. “We have instructed 17 private hospitals, which were already administering the vaccine to their staff, to inoculate at least 100 beneficiaries of the public a day for the initial few days,” the officer said.
The district also saw 420 health and government staff frontline workers getting vaccinated on the day.