A senior citizen takes the first shot of Covid Vaccine at Aundh district hospital. (Express photo by Ashish Kale) To ensure that the ongoing Covid19 vaccination drive is unaffected due to change in vaccine product, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to make available doses of both vaccines to the beneficiaries. Covishield will be available in 16 centres, while Covaxin is in 68 centres across the city.
“The citizens who had taken the first dose of Covishield were disturbed after there were reports of PMC not getting Covishield vaccine doses from the state government. However, the PMC has decided to reserve the available stock of Covishield to be used for administering the second dose to the beneficiaries,” said a civic officer.
Also, the vaccination drive cannot be slowed down so the Covaxin is being administered as the first dose to the beneficiaries, he said.
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On Tuesday, the PMC decided to make Covishield available in 16 centres, 4 in government hospitals and 12 in private hospitals. “Those eligible for the second dose can get inoculated at the 16 centres having Covishield doses,” the officer said.
The Covaxin doses are being administered only to those getting inoculated for the first time, he said, “It is available in 38 government hospitals and 30 in private hospitals.”
The PMC has so far administered 1,73,268 doses in the last two months since the launch of the vaccination drive on January 16. It scaled up the vaccination from 8 centres to 85 centres and has been able to inoculate a maximum of around 15,000 beneficiaries in a day.
The maximum beneficiaries are senior citizens with 77,385 getting their first dose so far. A total of 40,466 health care workers have been administered the first dose while 15,001 of them got the second jab. Similarly, a total of 26,291 frontline workers have received the first dose and 603 of them got the second dose. Also, the PMC has been able to administer the first dose of vaccine to 13,522 Comorbid above 45 years of age.
“We are confident of getting sufficient supply of both Covishield and Covaxin from the state government. The PMC is also trying to increase more centre to further scale up the vaccination,” an officer said.