Mumbai: BMC to open more COVID-19 vaccination centres; vaccine shortage persists

A senior citizen takes his vaccine shot at Nair Hospital on Thursday. Pic/Ashish Raje

While the registration process for vaccination of people above 18 years of age is scheduled to start from tomorrow, the city continues to face a shortage of vaccines. On Thursday, 48 centres out of the total 132 did not conduct vaccinations due to the non-availability of jabs. The BMC has already started training its staff as the number of centres will be increased from May 1, but it is still waiting for the state government's guidelines.

Many of the centres at public and government hospitals have been shut since the past two weeks due to non-availability of vaccines.

Dr. Mangala Gomare, executive health officer of the BMC, said, "We are administering vaccines as per the current stock and capacity of the centres. We are training more staff to increase the number of centres and waiting for guidelines to open them up."

Though the BMC is ready to start four centres in each of the 24 wards, availability of vaccines still remains a point of concern.

Even on Thursday, 48 centres were closed due to non-availability of vaccines and many people above the age of 45 years with comorbidities continue to wait for their first dose.

Though the BMC administered 48,152 jabs on Thursday, almost 40 per cent of them were second doses. Out of these, 4,000 doses were given to health care and frontline workers, 21,762 to senior citizens and 22,104 to those above 45 years of age with comorbidities.