NMC’s on-spot ‘tweak’ gets overwhelming response

Nagpur: By 1pm on Thursday, those manning Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s Covid inoculation centre, being operated from the first floor of Pachpaoli Women’s Hospital, were expecting it would be just another day with not more than one beneficiary at a time to deal with.
Since morning, 34 beneficiaries had walked in to take the Covishield jab, spent 30 minutes under observation and left without having to wait at any level.
A little after noon, the centre had a long queue of Asha workers, private doctors, nurses and non-clinical staff from hospitals lined up till its ground floor. For the next one hour, it took the medical team to streamline the rush, seen for the first time during Covid vaccination at any of the five centres in city. At 5pm, Pachpaoli topped the day’s vaccination chart with 102 taking the jab, though it had a curtailed list of 76 beneficiaries due to technical issues.
Additional municipal commissioner Ram Joshi said we were experimenting with the idea of adding registered private health care workers too through on-spot registration in the day's list of beneficiaries. A day before, spot registration was started to prevent vaccine dose wastage by letting all registered beneficiaries choose a suitable time instead of going by the serial order. Some private doctors reached on their own after reading about the move.
Joshi said Asha workers too were motivated to come forward and take the jab.
The NMC’s move came on a day when all seven rural Covid inoculation centres were shut to facilitate other regular immunization drives. The Covid drive is being held on alternate days in rural centres. Amravati division too took a break on Thursday.
Officials at Pachpaoli centre said they could finalize list of only 76 beneficiaries because of some glitches on the portal.
Daga Hospital too was part of the trial, but all private health workers received SMS asking them to report at Pachpaoli centre only.
As the private health workers received the message alerts about their vaccination appointment at 1pm, they immediately rushed to the Pachpaoli centre. Indian Medical Association (IMA) president Dr Archana Kothari too was allotted this centre.
Dr Kothari said after reading about daily dose wastage, she had contacted NMC medical team and requested if registered private health workers, who did Covid duties, can be accommodated in the on-spot method. “I provided an initial list and we got the calls immediately,” she said.
Doctors and nurses from Nirmaya Clinic too reached the centre. The clueless front-line workers were worried as the list didn’t carry their names and later those were added manually.
The unexpected rush led to some troubles for some doctors whose surgeries and consultations got held-up. A cardiologist from Lata Mangeshkar Hospital said he would have to rush back for an angioplasty at 3pm. “I assumed it would taken 30 to 40 minutes in all,” he said.
However, all the beneficiaries reaching after 2pm had to wait for a longer duration and the immunization slowed down.
Joshi said on-spot registration will be allowed for in-house staff of AIIMS, IGGMCH and GMCH as their numbers are pretty high. The civic body plans to restrict inoculation of private health care workers to its hospital and Daga Hospital.
Considering the difficulties in locating Pachpaoli centre, the NMC is now planning to shift the inoculation centre to its Isolation Hospital in Imambada. The civic chief will take a call on this in a couple of days.
Among rest of the four centres, AIIMS achieved 100% target, IGGMCH vaccinated 75 out of 100, Daga just 40 and GMCH mere 21. Nagpur city met 71% of the target with 338 taking the jab against the day’s target of 476. This took Vidarbha’s vaccination tally to 11,906.
Nagpur City
Centre -------------- Target ------------- V ---------------- %
Pachpaoli* ------------ 76---------------- 102 -------------131
AIIMS ------------------100 ------------- 100 --------------- 100
Daga ------------------100 ------------- 40 --------------- 40
IGGMCH ------------ 100 ------------- 75 ---------------75
GMCH ------------------100 ------------- 21 ------------- 21
Total ------------------- 476---------------- 338------- 71
(*Technical errors restricted target list. On-spot allowed Pachpaoli centre achieve higher %)
Wastage of doses
Centre -------------- Used------------- W
Pachpaoli ------------ 110---------------- 8
AIIMS ------------------110 ------------- 9
Daga ------------------40 ------------- 0
IGGMCH ------------ 80 ------------- 5
GMCH ------------------30 ------------- 9
Total ------------------ 370 ------------- 31
What Happened
NMC decides to add private health care workers in day’s beneficiaries through on-spot registration
First lot of private health care workers, who did Covid duties and had been enrolled by civic body, received SMS at 1pm
In the morning, NMC had also circulated awareness videos for Asha workers
Asha workers reported after their work at 1.30pm
This clashed with arrival of private health care workers
It was decided to send some private health care workers to Daga Hospital centre
But all landed up at Pachpaoli centre leading to chaos for some time