MUMBAI: The state carried out over 91,000 Covid-19 vaccinations on Friday, accounting for nearly 9% of the 10.34 lakh shots given across India and recording a moderate 20.6% rise in recipients from Thursday.
Mumbai carried out 29,487 vaccinations, a rise of 28.3% from Thursday. After 13 on Friday, six more private hospitals — Holy Spirit Hospital (Andheri East), Shivam (Kandivali), Surana (Malad), Surana Sethia (Chembur), Sushrut (Chembur), Balaji Hospital (Byculla) — will join the drive from Saturday. BMC has sought the Centre’s permission to rope in another 13 private hospitals.
The city’s 53 vaccination centres carried out the drive through 174 sessions. The biggest group of beneficiaries was the elderly at almost 20,000, with 2,199 persons with comorbidities, 5,063 healthcare workers and 2,266 frontline workers.
In five days, over two lakh elderly and persons above 45 years with co-morbidities across the state have received the first dose. Mumbai leads, reaching out to 58,104, followed by Pune (20,872), Thane (13,443) and Nagpur (12,256) districts. Compared to 6,705 of the target citizen groups who got vaccinated on Day 1, over 57,000 had turned up across Maharashtra on Friday.
Overall, the state has given 15.99 lakh shots, including 7.46 lakh first dose and 2.25 lakh second dose. Over 4 lakh frontline workers have been vaccinated. Public health experts said the numbers are increasing now as Covid cases are on the rise.
In the city, some private hospitals that started vaccinating on Friday had a mixed day. Masina faced hiccups with the initial registration. “We realised that the Co-WIN portal was running slow. If an individual has registered and the registration is not linked to Aadhar KYC due to a change of mobile number or so, we had to manually register the details, take a photograph and do the other formalities which were time-consuming,” said Dr Vispi Jokhi, CEO. The same process, if done through the phone-based app, was comparatively better, he said. However, the glitches resolved through the day.
Sion resident R Sridhar, who got vaccinated at the BKC jumbo facility with his mother, wife and physiotherapist daughter, said everything was done within an hour. “Only improvement I would suggest is having a separate queue for healthcare workers and people above 45. If everyone is clubbed together, the wait time gets longer. But overall, we had a seamless experience,” he said.
On the second day of vaccination at Bombay Hospital, Dr Gautam Bhansali said that nearly 500 people took the shot. “We have urged the corporation to extend the vaccination hours at least till 10pm,” he said. While the Centre had said vaccination centres could run 24/7, hospitals said it may not be practical. Dr Archana Patil, head of state health services, said: “We have kept it flexible.”
Sneha Joseph, executive director of Holy Spirit Hospital, said they plan to take at least 25% walk-in beneficiaries.