MUMBAI: Only 23 senior citizens turned up in eight civic wards to take the newly rolled out intranasal Covid vaccine in the city’s public vaccination centres on Friday, said health officials.
The BMC restarted its Covid vaccination drive after almost a month on Friday, setting up one vaccination centre in each of its 24 wards exclusively for senior citizens.
BMC’s daily Covid vaccination update showed that 36 people took the Covid vaccine on Friday — a jump from nine on Thursday. “Of these, 23 were senior citizens who took the new intranasal iNCOVACC vaccine,” said a senior BMC official. The remaining 13 took the Covovax shots available at a handful of private vaccination centres still operational in the city.
The reason for the poor turnout could be that people are no longer interested in Covid vaccination, said a civic doctor. A senior doctor said, “Even during the ongoing surge, people are seeing patients get better without having taken a Covid vaccine for over 17 months. There is no fear about the infection anymore.” There also is a lot of negativity and myths attached to the Covid vaccination drive. “Many are worried about taking a precautionary shot as a result,” he added.
The BMC had to stop its Covid vaccination drive after stocks of the original vaccines, Covishied and Covaxin, got over. The new vaccination drive by the BMC follows the state government’s procurement of 2 lakh doses of iNCOVACC, a heterologous booster manufactured by Bharat Biotech that can be given to those who have taken Covishied or Covaxin as the primary shots. The BMC received 2,000 doses last weekend for senior citizens, who have been most vulnerable to Covid so far. Each of the 23 elderly patients was given eight drops — four drops in each nostril.
Meanwhile, the state registered two deaths and a 20% drop in the daily tally of Covid cases; only 597 cases were detected on Friday as against 754 on Thursday. One Covid patient died in Raigad while, in Mumbai, a 77-year-old woman with multi-infarct dementia passed away.
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