Mumbai: BMC vaccinates over 34,000 on Friday

A citizen is vaccinated at Rajawadi Hospital on Friday. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi

Following the suspension of the vaccination drive on Thursday, the public inoculation centres were reopened on Friday for beneficiaries. There were mainly walk-ins here when they started the drive around afternoon. On Friday there were 34,203 inoculations at the public centres.

While the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) received a stock of about 1.25 lakh doses, and is expecting more by Sunday or Monday, it has decided to continue inoculations aggressively. The civic and government centers will be operational on Saturday. But as the civic body has decided that Sunday will be a general holiday, none of the public centres will be open for inoculation.

A citizen is vaccinated at Rajawadi Hospital on Friday. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi

A civic official said, "We are not going to slow down and keep inoculating as many beneficiaries as possible. We are currently allowing 50 per cent walk-ins and 50 per cent online appointments, which will continue till our stocks last."

Due to the delayed drive at the public centres, the number of inoculated beneficiaries recorded on Friday was barely 83,644. The civic body inoculated about 34,203 beneficiaries, whereas 60 private hospitals inoculated about 46,284 beneficiaries. The rest were vaccinated at state-run public centres.

With Friday's figures, the city has totalled 55,51,449 inoculations so far. The number of senior citizens inoculated on Friday was 6,637, citizens above the age of 45 was 22,090 and those in the age group of 18 to 44 was 54,183. There were just two cases of adverse effects reported at one of the private centers.