Coimbatore Corporation asked to be transparent about vaccination

June 20, 2021 11:23 pm | Updated 11:23 pm IST -

A few days ago, a Mettupalayam resident went all the way to Coimbatore to get vaccinated. The reason Prem Jayanth travelled more than 25km to get vaccinated was because there was vaccine shortage in Mettupalayam and Coimbatore being a city, thought that his chances of getting vaccinated would be better.

But he could not as there was no information available in the public domain on when the Corporation would vaccinate people, which vaccine it would administer and to what age category of people.

In a few vaccination centres, sources said, people waited in queue since 5 a.m. only to be told at 8 a.m. that there would be no vaccination on the day or it was for only the age category that they did not belong to.

And, worse, the staff at vaccination centres were unable to answer queries.

Sources in the Corporation said the civic body was informing people that there would be no vaccination on the day by placing a board outside the vaccination centres and that too in the mornings.

This would not help people waiting for vaccination because to know that there would be no vaccination, people would still have to travel all the way to the vaccination centres, countered consumer activist K. Kathirmathiyon.

It would be better if the Corporation used the press, social media platforms, FM radio and its website to inform public of when it would vaccinate people, the age category of people for whom it intended to vaccinate people and the type of vaccine it had on hand – Covaxin or Covishield.

He said it was more important that both the Corporation and district administration shared the vaccination information than the daily positive case count or number of deaths or positivity rate because people were running from one centre to another for vaccination.

In vaccinating the public, the Corporation should join hands with the Revenue Department or police or other such department like the Civil Supplies that had experience in crowd management.

He also suggested that the Corporation should prioritise the public over industry employees or bank employees or workers in organised sector as private hospitals had started getting vaccines and were ready to administer vaccines at work places, something that was not possible until a few days ago.

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