Kerala will receive a second consignment of 3,60,500 doses of Covishield vaccine on Wednesday. The second lot of vaccines is expected to arrive in Ernakulam and Thiruvananthapuram by air and will be despatched to districts.
Alappuzha will receive 19,000 doses in all, Ernakulam 59,000, Idukki 7,500, Kannur 26,500, Kasaragod 5,500, Kollam 21,000, Kottayam 24,000, Kozhikode 33,000, Malappuram 25,000, Palakkad 25,500, Pathanamthitta 19,000, Thiruvananthapuram 50,500, Thrissur 31,000 and Wayanad 14,000
The State had received an initial consignment of 4,33,500 doses of Covishield last week.
With this, the State would receive a total of 7,94,000 doses, which would be more than sufficient to fully vaccinate the 3,75,610 health-care workers in Kerala and 2,932 health-care personnel in Central Health service, who have registered their names for vaccination. Every health-care worker would be administered two doses of the vaccine, 28 days apart.
The second phase registration of front-line workers, who are the second group on the priority list for vaccination, which includes police, revenue, municipality, anganwadi and ASHA workers, is currently on. Till now, 74,711 employees of the Home Department and 6,600 Municipal workers have registered.
8,548 more vaccinated
On Tuesday, 8,548 health-care workers received the COVID-19 vaccine in the State. Ever since the vaccination drive was launched in the State, a total of 24,558 health-care workers have received the vaccine.
Following the Centre’s directive, the State has tried to limit the vaccination sites to no more than 133 a day to avoid issues in vaccine distribution and each site is managing to vaccinate 60-80% of the target number of vaccinations, health officials said.
“There is no denying that there is some vaccine hesitancy amongst health-care workers but some have dropped out of the list as pregnant and lactating mothers are not being administered the vaccine (all health-care workers had been asked to register their names ahead, before the vaccination eligibility criteria was fixed). Many with asthma, allergies and serious co-morbidities have now chosen to drop out of the list fearing the side effects. Apart from all this, the glitches in the CoWIN application have been making data entry a difficult process. Once the teething issues are over, the vaccination process should be smooth,” a senior Health official said.
No serious side effects
Official reports said that no serious side effects or anaphylactic reaction due to the vaccine had been observed in anyone. However, nearly 50% of those who received the vaccine experienced pain at the injection site, general body pain, nausea, fatigue and fever.
Senior Health Department officials said that minor and self-resolving side effects were expected just as the mild reactions that occur in children after DPT vaccination. While some had to be kept in observation, there have been no hospital admissions, the officials said.
