Gurugram health workers who had missed vaccine jabs on first two days can take them on January 21

More than 2,100 front-line healthcare workers, who could not be inoculated on the first two days of the Covid-19 vaccination drive, will be allowed to take the vaccine jabs on January 21, officials of the health department said on Tuesday. Most of the workers did not receive proper communication through the Co-WIN platform, officials said, while some of them had refrained from the drive due to concerns over the vaccine safety.

Due to the poor functioning of the Co-WIN platform, according to officials, many vaccine beneficiaries were not aware of the location to take the Covid-19 vaccine shot. The department has planned to set up nine additional vaccination session sites along with the 36 sites for the upcoming vaccination drive on January 21.

“The teams are listing out healthcare workers who were left out in the last two drives. We are ensuring text messages get delivered timely to these health workers, by Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, through Co-WIN without any hassle,” said Dr MP Singh, district immunisation officer.

On January 16, during the launch of Covid-19 vaccines, only 408 of the 600 healthcare workers listed for vaccination had turned up, due to which the beneficiary list was extended to those who were not listed for vaccination on the day. On the second day of the drive, held on Monday, only 2,881 of the 4,836 healthcare workers listed for vaccination had turned up.

Until now, at least 2,147 people have been missed out. Since it is a voluntary exercise, many healthcare workers have also been reluctant to come forward. The drive has started in private hospitals too, where the vaccination coverage has been almost 60%, while in the case of public healthcare workers, it stood at 30% on Monday.

Officials said that including workers who had missed out will not only increase the coverage but also reduce pendency. For this reason, the department has decided to set up additional session sites.

Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer, said, “In total, there will be at least 45 session sites now for January 21. Decisions are yet to be taken on streamlining the vaccination process so that the majority of healthcare workers are covered in public and private set-ups.”

Due to technical glitches on Co-WIN, the health department has been manually compiling the data entry at the vaccination sites. The state health department has permitted districts to keep manual records of individuals taking the vaccine jab at sites and updating it later on the platform. Yadav said that multiple changes are likely to happen in the Co-WIN platform to make it functional during the vaccination hours.