PUNE: The number of pregnant women taking the Covid-19 shot in Maharashtra has doubled following the data update exercise undertaken by the health department.
Till the beginning of November, as many as 32,537 pregnant women had received one dose of the vaccine. This number increased to 68,991 after the completion of the data update exercise. As against 1,026 fully vaccinated pregnant women till the beginning of November, the figure has now increased to 3,471.
Having said that, the vaccination numbers are miniscule, considering nearly 10-20 lakh pregnant women are there in the state.
State immunization officer Dr Sachin Desai told TOI, “Several districts had earlier not updated their data on the number of pregnant women they had vaccinated. They were then instructed in the recent online meetings to update the numbers at the earliest.”
Desai said as per private doctors, vaccine hesitancy among pregnant women was reducing. “CoWIN, however, does not have a separate category of pregnant women. Therefore, while government sites are reporting vaccination of expectant mothers separately, private sites are clubbing the jabs given to this group with those given to general population under the age-wise categories,” he said.
Dr Rajshree Patil, medical officer at Kamala Nehru Hospital, said, “There is a steady number of pregnant women coming to take the jabs. Our site has been inoculating at least two to three expectant mothers every week, which wasn’t the case when jabs for this category were opened up a few months ago.”
