Drive-in vax turns walk-in on Day 2 as NMC allows spot regn

Nagpur: The twin drive-in Covid-19 vaccination event, which began with fanfare on Friday, became a walk-in on Day 2. Like in some other cities, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) too had got state permission to inoculate people arriving in vehicles and it set up the facility in the parking lot of Glocal Square Mall (Sitabuldi) and VR Mall (Rambagh).
Though online appointment was mandatory, the NMC allowed those who walked in to take the jab. “Despite online appointments, we were made to wait in a queue. No preference was given even though I requested the staff at Glocal Square Mall,” said a beneficiary.
According to NMC officials, many walked in after parking their vehicles and no separate lines could be formed. “Since vehicles cannot be parked on the Glocal ramp, the four-wheelers were stopped on the ground floor. To save their time, we asked beneficiaries to register first, go back to their vehicles and then drive in for the jab. But they preferred to stay back. So we arranged chairs, drinking water, tea, biscuits for the senior citizens,” they said.
Meanwhile, the NMC will be able to continue inoculation of 45-plus citizens on Sunday as it managed to procure doses from zilla parishad (ZP) which has sufficient stock. Until evening, this was uncertain.
Going by more than double the number of people who got vaccinated on Saturday, the drive-in plan seems to have clicked. The NMC is now exploring at increasing the venues.
Totally 281 were administered the vaccine at the malls — 150 at Glocal and 131 at VR Mall. On Friday, correspondingly it was 105, 85 and 22.
As per the NMC record, 53 at Glocal and 14 at VR Mall were from the 45-59 age group.
Also on Saturday, the NMC resumed administering the first dose of 45-plus at 99 centres. This had taken a hit till May 12 due to lack of doses. As many were in the waiting, the civic body allowed the second dose on May 13 (14,519). The number of beneficiaries declined to 9,548 on May 14 as the central government increased the gap from 6-8 to 12-16 weeks for those availing Covishield.
On Saturday, the number of beneficiaries surged to 14,468 — 7,523 1st dose and 6,945 2nd.
As the NMC was left with only 5,000 doses on Saturday, its chief medical officer Dr Sanjay Chilkar talked to ZP officials and managed to get 7,000 doses of Covishield and Covaxin.