Coimbatore: No fresh stock of vaccine for 5th day, inoculation drive hit

COIMBATORE: The district didn’t receive any fresh stock of Covid-19 vaccines for the fifth consecutive day on Tuesday, hitting the inoculation drive. For the third day in a row, no vaccination camps were conducted for the public in the district. However, there are a few doses of vaccines left to inoculate the pregnant women, who could approach the government hospitals or village health nurses for the jab.
Meanwhile, around 50 to 60 representatives of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam (TDPK), street vendors’ association and differently-abled welfare associations protested the “extremely low” vaccine allotment for Mettupalayam municipality on Tuesday morning.
They gathered behind the Mettupalayam bus stand in protest and said, even small village panchayats were allotted more doses than that to the municipality.
The protesters said it was on Friday that Mettupalayam received its last allotment of 200 doses, that too after a lot of wrangling. They said the municipality was receiving vaccine allotments only once a week and the doses were limited to a few hundreds.
S Basha, CITU general secretary, Mettupalayam taluk, said small villages such as S Pungampalayam, K Pungampalayam and Pallepalayam in Karamadai block were getting 500 and 300 each doses, respectively, every week. “In total, Karamadai block receives 1,300 doses. But we get only 200 doses, that too after meeting the collector twice and health officers in person.”
Pointing out that the municipality had a population of 65,000, the protesters said the residents were desperate to get inoculated.
One of the protesters said some elderly people had been sleeping outside the Mettupalayam primary health centre regularly for weeks to try their chances of securing a token for the second dose of vaccine the next morning, but only to be turned away empty-handed. “They are not on WhatsApp and Facebook and don’t get updates on vaccination at 10pm, when they have already reached the primary health centre in anticipation of the next day’s token. They don’t want to miss a chance to get the final dose.”
Basha, meanwhile, said the health department was conducting vaccination camps in remote tribal areas in and around Pillur, where the residents were mostly not willing to get inoculated. “Health officials are forcing the tribals to take the jab against their wishes and turning a blind eye to the people who are desperate and begging for the vaccine.”
The protesters also demanded the authorities to arrange more vaccination centres in Mettupalayam, where it is presently limited to the primary health centre.