Number of Covaxin jabs at GMCH down to 29 on Day 2

Nagpur: The number of health care workers skipping the anti-Covid vaccine jab at Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), which is an exclusive centre for Covaxin in the city, on Tuesday dipped further. At the end of the day, only 29 out of 100 beneficiaries took the jab of the indigenous vaccine manufactured by Bharat Biotech.
This was the lowest among all five centres in the city.Rest of the four centres are administering Covishield, which is supplied by Pune-based Serum Institute of India.
On the first day of the vaccination drive, i.e. January 16, 53 beneficiaries had been vaccinated with Covaxin at GMCH.
Twenty-two beneficiaries had turned up by 1pm at ward number 49, where the immunization is being held by the preventive and social medicine department (PSM).
Associate professor of pharmacology Dr Avinash Turankar was the first to be vaccinated, when the drive resumed at 9am, after a gap of two days. The next seven beneficiaries arrived after their duty hours, between 2pm and 5pm. The vaccinated beneficiaries include 20 men and nine women. Four, including two men and two women, were found to have risk of contraindications and were accordingly discouraged from taking the shots. Two of them had absolute and two relative contraindications. Two had drug allergies and two were on steroids.
The day, however, passed off without any issues being reported about the Co-Win app.
As the arrival of beneficiaries came to a halt, immunization team led by Dr Abhay Chavan started calling up their colleagues around 3pm. But some of them said they would come after work hours, while some said they had to rush outstation for some emergency.
Officials said basically these were excuses to skip the vaccination. “Doctors and nurses are well aware that the vaccine’s adverse events following immunization (AEFI) data is still not released by the manufacturer. Hence, they are reluctant,” said the officials.
On Wednesday, top officials are scheduled to get the shots. It remains to be seen whether they skip or go for the Covaxin jabs.