COVID-19 vaccination drive: BMC centres in Mumbai won’t operate 24x7 yet

Recipients wait in the observation room after receiving their dose of the vaccine against COVID-19, at Nair Hospital on Thursday. Pic/Ashish Raje

The central government has allowed private hospitals to operate 24X7 in the vaccination drive, but the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to wait and watch before keeping its centres functioning for the same period. The city also lacks adequate on-the-spot registration facilities at the vaccination centres and it has become a cumbersome task, especially for health officials and frontline workers to find the nearest such centre, if they reside in the island city.

While the civic body has allowed walk-ins without appointments at the 23-odd government and 13 private hospitals that have been newly added to the list, the facility to register on-the-spot is only available at five places, all in suburbs -the BKC Jumbo Centre, NESCO Jumbo Centre, Dahisar Jumbo Centre, Mulund Jumbo Centre and Seven Hills Hospital. To get vaccinated at other places, one has to be registered on the CoWIN portal.

There are two types of walk-ins, in one, citizens are registered on the portal but do not have scheduled appointments and in the other, there are unregistered citizens. Even the health and frontline workers that were not registered initially due to some reason can prove their identities and get registered only at these five places, revealed health department officials.

‘To avoid the load'
BMC officials said that the main reason for not starting the on-spot registration everywhere is to avoid the load, as the major hospitals are already conducting sessions at their full capacity.

Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani said, "We want many people to do the registrations on the portal as it will be helpful for better management, and hence we have not opened all the hospitals for on-the-spot registrations for now. But we allow walk-ins which are registered. Private hospitals have instructions to allow walk-ins like us but whether they have a separate front desk for on-spot registration is upto them."

A private hospitals' representative said that they want citizens who have not registered to call before walking-in for their own benefit, as they are looking at catering to the unregistered or registered walk-ins only from afternoon to evening.

However, having only five centres for on-the-spot registration is also inconveniencing doctors. A doctor from Cooper Hospital said, "For over a month new registrations of health and frontline workers were not allowed. Now they have started and those who were left out can enroll themselves. Our doctors who were on leave when the registration process was on had to go to Seven Hills for registration as we do not have this facility."

The doctor further added, "Many senior citizens come without self-registration and because we don't like to turn them away, our social services staff usually help them with registration through their mobile phones. But if there is a big crowd we have to ask them to return."

"BMC personnel have been working overtime at various vaccination centres with the increased number of registered senior citizens' walk-ins, but officials said that the crowd starts to reduce post 4 pm and only those who have walked in and are in a queue wait... If the response continues, few centres may be able to function. Currently we are on wait and watch mode," said a senior civic official.

BMC, pvt centres cross vaccination capacity
The BMC along with 19 vaccination centres at private hospitals, inoculated 22,975 people against the novel Coronavirus on Thursday -- the maximum so far, according to data up to 6 pm. Vaccination was underway beyond that in some centres. The combined vaccination capacity of all centres in the city is 17,700 people. Of the nearly 23,000 people vaccinated, nearly 15,000 were senior citizens. The BMC vaccinated 18,217 people, including 11,000 senior citizens. "Nine more private hospitals will start vaccination centres from Friday. Breach Candy, H N Reliance and Masina are private, and Lion Tarachand (Sion), Sapna Healthcare (Ghatkopar), Millat Diagnostics (Jogeshwari), Balaji Hospital (Malad), Meena's (Bhandup) and Dr Bhatia (Bhandup) are registered under Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana Abhiyan," a BMC official said. Civic-run HBT trauma at Jogeshwari will also start its centre on Friday.