At a time when the COVID-19 vaccination drive has picked up pace, many recipients of the first dose have failed to turn up for the second one as they have forgotten the date of inoculation due to long intervals.
Of late, incidences of people forgetting their second dose had been noticed in villages. The interval prescribed for two doses of Covishield is 12 to 16 weeks, while for Covaxin it is 28 to 42 days. In Odisha, Covaxin is administered only in two major urban centres such as Bhubaneswar and Berhampur. Covishield is administered in rest of the State.
“The number of people not turning up for the second dose is sizeable. As of now, 2.83 crore people have been inoculated. About 67% of the State’s eligible population has taken the first dose. But, 72%, whose second dose are due have been vaccinated whereas 28% have not come to vaccine centres,” said Dr. Bijay Panigrahi, Director, Family Welfare, and nodal officer of the vaccination drive.
Though the reminder of the second dose was generated from CoWIN portal automatically, beneficiaries were not taking advantage of it. The government had come out with the list of people whose second dose were due. Frontline health workers have been instructed to bring the beneficiaries to the vaccine centres, he noted.
Vaccination of pregnant women
The State had administered vaccine to 1.60 lakh pregnant women. “We have enough vaccine [around 20 lakh] stocked with us. For the past three days, we have been administering 4 lakh doses a day. We are also increasing the vaccine sites. As many as 1,775 vaccine centres have been identified on Thursday,” he stated.
According to the trend, people from rural areas were receiving more vaccines than the urban population. “Since beneficiaries in rural areas are more than that of urban areas, we are focusing on villages and setting up centres up to gram panchayat level,” added Dr. Panigrahi.
