BMC to hold special vaccine sessions for housing societies

A beneficiary is given a dose of Covaxin at Nair hospital, Mumbai Central, on Tuesday. Pic/Ashish Raje

To ensure that no Mumbaikar is left unjabbed, the civic body plans to assign special days for vaccination for buildings and areas on selected road stretches. The BMC will involve local corporators to achieve its ‘mission 100%'.

The civic corporation is no longer saddled with the challenge of vaccine shortage and over 90 per cent of the city's eligible population have received at least one dose. The aim now is to make sure that there are no gaps in its vaccination cover.

‘Trying to reach out'

"There are some people who didn't take the vaccines as they were infected with the Coronavirus or afraid of the vaccines or had misconceptions. A few stayed away due to crowds at vaccination centres. But now since most people are already vaccinated, we are trying to reach out to those who have got left out," said BMC official.

Logos for societies

"Some people say there is crowd, they don't get a slot, etc. By allotting special slots for societies, colonies on the same road will ensure that everyone will get a vaccine and local corporator can coordinate with people and the vaccination centres," said Suresh Kakani, additional commissioner of the BMC. He said that logos would be given to societies where all members are fully vaccinated and this will raise awareness and prompt others to contact nearby vaccination centres for the remaining members of their societies.

Till October 5, civic data shows, 83.14 lakh people have received at least one dose, whereas 43.97 lakh beneficiaries are fully vaccinated. Mumbai has nearly 90 lakh citizens above 18 years who are eligible for vaccines. In the past seven days, 1.69 lakh citizens have taken their first dose against 2.31 lakh who came for the second shot. This means almost 30 per cent more citizens received the second dose and the crowd for the first dose has been going down.