Teen vaccination progress sluggish

Vadodara: The vaccination drive for adolescents between 15 and 18 years of age is loosing steam. The decline has been consistent despite a large population of eligible teenagers still remaining unvaccinated. The

Vadodara Municipal Corporation

(

VMC

) had estimated that around 96,660 adolescents in that age group needed to be vaccinated. It was expected that the vaccination will not be a difficult task and vaccinations will be done in large numbers in schools and education institutes.However, since the second day of the drive itself, numbers started declining. So far, 51,149 eligible teenagers have been vaccinated, which is nearly 53 per cent of the population.Hiccups were witnessed during the vaccination drive in some schools too. For instance, on Wednesday, Paresh Patel had to call his daughter back from her school when her vaccine was getting delayed. “The wait was very long and I asked her to return. There is either a shortage of the vaccine or there are some distribution problems,” Patel said. Some other schools too witnessed delays or periods when vaccines were not there. A source said that there was no shortage of Covaxin shots till Thursday. There were sufficient doses to begin vaccination on Friday morning and more were expected during the day. But if the supply was delayed, the drive may get hit.