NEW DELHI: The COVID-19 vaccination drive for the 12-14 age-group in the national capital saw a slow start, with the first day response being quite tepid.
Only 3,837 children were administered the dose on Wednesday, even though 6-7 lakh children in this age bracket are eligible for vaccination. "One of the districts had zero vaccination in this age-group while the maximum happened in northeast district as it had 63 vaccination centres," said a health department official.
A total of 140 vaccination centres were set up across 11 districts. Delhi government officials said they had received 6,31,400 doses of Corbevax, India's second indigenous vaccine. The staff at the vaccination centres said there was lack of awareness among people as the official notification for the jab drive from the Centre reached schools only late Tuesday.
At the government school in J&K block, Seemapuri, only 10 children had turned up till noon, according to the vaccination-in charge there. Not even a single dose was administered at the vaccination centre at Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya in East Vinod Nagar till 2.30pm.
The health workers administering the shots said the turnout was low possibly because it was a school day with final exams going on and hoped for the drive to pick up on weekend. According to officials from the Delhi government’s health department, they received the notification on Tuesday and could not advertise much about the vaccination drive. Some of them said it was just a 'token launch' as March 16 was the National Vaccination Day.
The official said in the earlier phases, they had ample time for preparation. "This time, we were only given a day to prepare for the inoculation drive in which we trained our officials and later anganwadi workers, and arranged the vaccines," said an official.
Some of the schools were not even aware if the vaccination for the new batch had to begin, while some reported lack of vaccines and some stated that they could not inform the parents at a short notice.
One of the major problems officials faced was that each vial has 20 doses and to avoid wastage, at least 15 children must be present at a given time at a vaccination centre so that doses can be administered within hours of opening the vial.
"As just two or three children came within a span of an hour, it wasn’t possible to open the vial just for such a small number. We don’t have the permission for the same, as the doses get wasted. Hence, we had to tell them to come on the weekend," said an official at one of the centres.