INDORE: Covid-19 vaccination drive has slowed down in the last 18 days as the district has been missing daily targets. Vaccine targets were missed even during the three mega drives held on September 17, 30, and October 4.
This has prompted the authorities to run vaccination drives on Tuesday, which is a regular immunization day along with Friday.
“We are running the vaccine sites at IMC zonal offices along with government facilities in urban and rural areas as we have vaccines in abundance,” said district immunization in-charge Dr Tarun Gupta.
On less turnout, Dr Gupta said, “People are not giving priority to second dose of Covid-19 vaccine because of multiple reasons like complacency, apprehensiveness, and carelessness.”
“Fear factor generated after the second wave of Covid-19 has helped in speeding up the first dose inoculation in the district. But, as the Covid-19 waned, people became complacent to take a second shot, which is required for prolonged prevention from disease”, said Dr Gupta.
The situation has helped Indore become the first million plus city to achieve 100% first dose coverage on August 31, said Dr Gupta.
“There are also some people with history of fever, pain after the first dose and they are avoiding the second due to this fear. However, fever and body ache after vaccine are good signs”, said Dr Gupta. The records showed that the district had been easily clocking around 30,000 to 40,000 on a regular day prior to September 17 but despite an increase in due, overdue number to all time high of eight lakh, inoculation number kept on dipping. Now, there are 6 lakh people whose second shot is overdue. On Tuesday, the district only administered 4900 doses at 67 sites including 54 government ones.
