Vaccination: Despite glitches, Telangana sees 67.4% turnout

HYDERABAD:  While 4,558 elderly beneficiaries took the first shot of Covid-19 vaccine on Monday, glitches on the CoWIN portal dampened the overall celebratory mood in the State Health Department.  For a large part of the day, it remained inaccessible not just for beneficiaries but hospital officials as well, forcing a shift to manual mode. Issues ranged from servers being down to OTPs not coming in.

However, Director for Public Health G Srinivasa Rao said he was delighted that many in the age group of 45-60 with co-morbidities turned up. “We are happy with the response in the State and it shows the senior citizens have kept aside their vaccine hesitancy. What is even more encouraging is that no AEFI cases were reported on Monday,” he said.

Officials managed to set up all 93 centres on Monday with a target of 6,759 beneficiaries. Of these 93 centres, 48 were government facilities where 2,005 turned up, and 25 were private facilities where 2,553 took the shot. Overall 67.4% turnout was witnessed in the State. 

The total number of beneficiaries who have been vaccinated with at least one dose of vaccine in Telangana has crossed 3,00,399. This is higher than the number of reported Covid-19 cases in the State, which is now at 2,98,923. According to health officials, the response was much better in private hospitals than in government hospitals and the response was overwhelmingly positive in Hyderabad than in districts. “Considering the CoWIN glitches, we have decided to allow walk-in registrations and also asked hospitals to administer the vaccine in offline mode, if the portal is down,” Rao said.

All vaccinations given on Day 1 were of Covishield. Officials noted this was done as it was in a greater supply in the State. The sessions will slowly increase in more hospitals in the coming week. From Tuesday, the session will run from 10 am to 4 pm and is open for all eligible candidates in priority groups.