Pune: 75-hour Covid-19 vaccination drive starts at two civic hospitals

PUNE: The civic body started its 75-hour continuous Covid vaccination drive at its Kamala Nehru and Sutar Hospitals from Tuesday.
Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) officials stated that they had deployed three teams in three shifts across the two designated venues of the drive.
Rajashri Patil, the vaccination in-charge at the Kamala Nehru hospital, said that by afternoon, they had vaccinated around 130 beneficiaries with Covaxin and around 40 beneficiaries with Covishield.
“Now that most of the beneficiaries have received their first or second shots, there has been less crowd. The vaccination under the special drive will also be available during the night. However, we are not sure whether there would be any takers for the same,” she said.
Ashish Bharati, the PMC’s civic health chief, said they were hoping for a good response to the drive on Wednesday and Thursday.
Bharati said that the civic body was focusing more on the second dose beneficiaries, with 80% of the doses reserved for those with the second jab pending. “We have already covered a fair portion of our first jab beneficiaries and the target now remains to cover the pending ones,” he added.
Sanjay Deshmukh, assistant director (medical), Pune circle, told TOI, “We have been receiving a good amount of doses for the vaccination drive. On September 30, the district had received 2.2 lakh doses of Covishield and Covaxin, while on October 4, we received 2.78 lakh doses.”
According to Deshmukh, as per the Centre’s guidelines, the district’s final vaccination target had been tweaked and it was now set at 83.66 lakh from the earlier 87 lakh.
Around 72.98 lakh beneficiaries had received their first shot and 35.83 lakh beneficiaries had received both shots. On Tuesday, around 49,572 beneficiaries were administered the vaccine in the district.