Vaccination Day 2: 52.6 per cent beneficiaries vaccinated in state, 48 per cent in Pune district

Dr Sanjay Deshmukh, deputy director of health, Pune region — which includes Pune, Satara and Solapur — said the vaccination rate in the region was at 53 per cent. The entire process was online via the Co-Win digital platform, he said, adding that they were also expecting the numbers to rise.

In Pune district, the vaccine was administered to 48 per cent of the 2,900 estimated beneficiaries, and a total of 1,403 were inoculated. In Pune rural, the target was 1,500, and 61 per cent of intended beneficiaries were vaccinated. Both PMC and PCMC areas saw a low turnout of intended beneficiaries. In Pune Municipal Corporation areas, of the 600 estimated beneficiaries, only 36 percent were inoculated, while 35 per cent of the 800 beneficiaries received the dose in areas under Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation.

At the district hospital in Aundh, a total of 35 healthcare workers got the Covaxin dose and at Solapur Government Medical College, another centre where the Bharat Biotech vaccine was administered, a total of 54 got the shot.

In Pune city, three private hospitals — Noble, Deenanath Mangeshkar and Bharati hospitals — could not participate in the vaccination drive due to glitches in the software. Ruby Hall Clinic got the list of vaccine beneficiaries at 7.30 a.m on Tuesday while the Covid-19 vaccination drive resumed across the remaining vaccination sites in Pune district.

“We have been told by the PMC authorities that the system was unable to locate and set up the sessions for vaccine beneficiaries,” Noble Hospital’s executive director Dr H K Sale told The Indian Express. Dr Sale said they had requested PMC to allow them to provide a list of 100 health workers who can be vaccinated. However, the Centre is firm that vaccine beneficiaries have to get the shot only through the process as entailed under the Co-Win digital platform.

At Bharati Hospital, Medical Director Dr Sanjay Lalwani said they had not received the list of vaccine beneficiaries and hence there would be no vaccination at their site on Tuesday. Authorities at Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital also expressed similar sentiments and informed that there would be no vaccination on Tuesday at their site.

At the end of the day, the PMC administered the vaccine to 213 of 591 selected beneficiary health workers. “There were problems in the software for registration of vaccinations. Only one among the four centres in private hospitals was operational while four centres at government facilities conducted the drive as planned,” said Ashish Bharati, in-charge of the civic health department.

The centre at Ruby Hall Clinic registered a relatively good response as 57 of the 91 selected beneficiaries were given the vaccine today.

The lowest turnout was in PMC-run Sutar Hospital, with 21 of 100 health workers getting vaccinated, followed by 26 in Rajiv Gandhi Hospital and 37 in the state government-run B J Medical College. The PMC also arranged two sessions of vaccinations in Kamla Nehru Hospital to vaccinate 100 health workers at each site, but ended up vaccinating only 25 and 47 health workers in the two sessions at the hospital.

On the first day of the vaccination rollout, private hospitals had seen a better vaccination rate than government hospitals in Pune.

Meanwhile, civic health officials admitted that the problem was related to heavy traffic on the server. As against 11,000 vaccine beneficiaries from government and corporation-run hospitals, there were over 40,000 registered from private hospitals.

A tech team in Delhi was trying to address the issue.

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