No plan in place for 3rd phase

Deepkamal Kaur

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Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 28

Even as just two days are left for the third phase of vaccination to start, it seems that there is still no plan in place with the authorities for carrying out the drive for the largest section of population in the 18+ age group. The civic authorities, doctors at the government and private hospitals are still groping in dark as they are not aware as to how much stock of vaccination would be made available to them and at what price. The officials said they were expecting some instructions from the state government in the next two days and would go forward accordingly.

Since the government made it mandatory for 18-45 year of age residents to register for Covid vaccination starting from May 1, several residents complained that they faced technical glitches while trying to get themselves registered through CoWIN portal at 4 pm today.

While some youth said the server had crashed, others said they kept waiting for the OTP for hours to continue with the registration process. Sahil Sharma, a resident, said, “As the registration was to start at 4 pm, I was perhaps among the first ones to log in. But as I was still in the process, the site crashed. I kept trying but nothing worked out and I finally gave in. Surely, there were millions like me trying to log in at the same time.”

Vibhuti, a teacher by profession, said, “The CoWIN portal had too many glitches. It was not working properly. It was late in the evening that I got to know that the error had been rectified. I may try late night or tomorrow again.”

Demand on day-to-day basis

The doctors at the government hospitals said they were getting vaccination supplies on day-to-day basis depending on the stock that the state government was allocating to the district after every two-three days. The doctors said the supply varied between 15,000 to 30,000 injections and hence the allocation was made to all hospitals. Yesterday, they said some people had to be turned back in government hospitals too as the stock had got exhausted by afternoon but it got replenished later in the evening. Dr BS Johal, who runs a private hospital, said, “We did not get vaccine supply yesterday. The usual demand at our hospital is 80-100 persons as many people prefer to get vaccinated at government hospitals.”

District Immunisation Officer Dr Rakesh Chopra said, “We always prefer to complete the demand coming from the government hospitals. We are giving doses to the private hospitals only when we have them in surplus.”

About the preparations for more rush expected on May 1, he said, “All depends on the supplies that the state gets from the Centre and further the state allocates to the districts. As of date, we cannot guess as to how much could be the turn out and how much stock we will get. As of now, we have no specific instructions.”

No instructions yet on pricing

Dr Navjot Dahiya, National Vice President, IMA, said, “Everything is still uncertain for the new phase of vaccination for 18+ starting from May 1. We have no idea of how the vaccination will be priced then. The government has not issued us any instructions yet.”