Chandigarh braces for round 2 of vaccination programme

Naina Mishra
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, January 30

The UT Administration is going to outline the vaccination drive for frontline workers after the Central Government will open the CoWIN portal on February 2 for the second round.

After receiving a go-ahead from the Centre to inoculate the next target group, the UT is going to begin vaccinating frontline workers in the first week of February. The turnout of healthcare workers has been around 50 per cent in the city.

As per the initial plan, there are chances that an additional session may be opened at each site for the frontline workers. However, it all depends on the response of the frontline workers to the vaccination drive.

The categories

The Central Government has divided the frontline workers into five categories. The first category consists of police, civil defence and Home Guards personnel. The second category has paramilitary personnel while municipal workers come in the third list. Disaster management professionals are in the fourth category. Fire safety personnel and prison staffers are in the fifth category.

Dr Amandeep Kaur Kang, Director, Health Services, UT, said: “The portal is going live on February 2. On that day, we will come to know the number of frontline workers to be vaccinated. Initially, we will call frontline workers along with healthcare workers to achieve the number of 100 beneficiaries at each site. However, if the response is good from the frontline workers, then we may add another session to each site. So far, we are going to run the existing sites only as the response from healthcare workers is lukewarm and there is still vaccine hesitancy among this lot.”

The frontline workers might be counselled if the need arises with the support of their respective department.

The Central Government has divided the frontline workers into five categories. The first category consists of police, civil defence and Home Guards personnel. The second category has paramilitary personnel while municipal workers come in the third list. Disaster management professionals are in the fourth category. Fire safety personnel and prison staffers are in the fifth category.

Chandigarh has more than 7,000 police personnel and 6,000 MC workers.