In its pilot vaccination drive of the country, nearly a year after reporting its first COVID-19 case, India administered vaccines to over a lakh and 65 thousand beneficiaries. Termed the world's largest vaccination drive, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the same virtually to inoculate health care and frontline workers with its approved vaccines - Covaxin and Covishield. The drive was conducted at 3006 sites spread across the country.
BOOM visited vaccination centres set up at major hospitals in Mumbai, Bhopal, Delhi and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency, Varanasi. While most centres reported no glitches in the vaccination drive, we found some centres reported problems in the Cowin app used for registration of those getting vaccinated. There were also issues in the process of verification, health checkup and informed consent of the workers.
Speaking to the media, The Ministry of Health And Family Welfare reported, citing provisional data, that a total of 16,755 personnel were involved in 3,351 immunisation sessions wherein 1,65,714 beneficiaries were vaccinated across the country on the first day. The ministry further stated that no case of post-vaccination hospitalisation were reported so far.
Here is our round up from the four cities
MUMBAI - RN COOPER HOSPITAL
DELHI - RAM MANOHAR LOHIYA HOSPITAL
Dr. Rana A.K Singh, Medical Superintendent, RML Hospital
Around 81 hospitals in Delhi have been provided with vaccination drive centres. Of these, around 75 hospitals come under Delhi government and private category while six come under the ambit of the Central government.
At Ram Manohar Lohiya (RML) hospital the vaccination drive was conducted under the guidance of Nodal officer Neelima Rai and headed by doctor Rana AK Singh, superintendent of the RML hospital.
While talking to BOOM, Singh termed the vaccination drive as the "beginning of the end of Corona." The hospital divided into separate sections including a waiting room and observation room where those vaccinated were kept under observation for 30 mins. Central minister Vijay Goyal and Health and Family Welfare Minister for State Ashwini Chaubey visited the hospital and inspected the ongoing drive.
The centre saw interesting developments including women's wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party holding banners and sloganeering in praise of PM Modi. The hospital authorities did not allow media persons to record videos of the centre and the vaccination drive.
While the hospital set a target of 100 people to be inoculated, till 4 pm only 30 was to inoculate 100 persons, only 30 doses were administered till 4 pm with the drive ending at 5pm.
BHOPAL - COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTRE
The Community Health Centre in Gandhi Nagar in Bhopal, one of the 12 centres in Madhya Pradesh's capital city saw only 25 people receive the vaccine shot.
The beneficiaries received Covishield and while no immediate adverse effects were reported, many health care workers who received the vaccine reported that no health screening was conducted before the dose was administered.
Halki Kushwaha, Gram Panchyat Tara Semania, Bhopal.
At the centre, Halki Kushwaha, 36, was the first individual to get the shot and when asked whether she felt any side effects she denied and said, "I am feeling fine. I have never been ill as my immune system is good". However, Kushwaha did not receive any acknowledgement either in the form of a receipt, certificate or text message upon completion of the process. This, the doctors at the CHC claimed was because the COWIN website faced technical issues.
"The beneficiaries will receive a text message and in a situation of negative impact of vaccine, they can use that to report the same," Dr Ramhit Kumar said.
VARANASI - District Women's Hospital
The COVID Vaccination drive was conducted today in Varanasi across six centres- District Women's Hospital, Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Hospital, Sir Sunderlal Hospital Banaras Hindu University which are government hospitals, Heritage medical institute which is a private hospital, and the Community Health Centres at Sevapuri and Kashi Vidyapeeth, Misirpur.
100 beneficiaries were to be vaccinated at each centre between 10 to 5 pm in four slots of 25 people each, meaning a total of 600 people in the district but only 386 people were actually inoculated.
In Varanasi the dates for further vaccination are still uncertain. The additional CMO told us that it could be next Friday but it is still not official.
No cases of any adverse effects following immunisation were seen. A case was reported from the centre in Deen Dayal Upadhyaya hospital where a 50 year old woman experienced nausea and discomfort after vaccination. The additional CMO clarified saying that the woman just had shivers due to the low temperatures in the area, her vitals are fine and it was not a fallout of the vaccine.
Reporting by - Shachi Sutaria, Saket Tiwari, Mohammad Salman, Sadhika Tiwari, Anmol Alphonso