Mumbai: People scamper for Covid-19 vaccines but BMC has none

People queue up to register for vaccination at Nair Hospital on Wednesday. Pic/Suresh Karkera

The fact that only fully vaccinated people will be allowed to take locals from August 15, that too if they have completed 14 days after the second dose, has led to a lot of panic among those who are yet to get their second shot. They now want the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to ensure that at least those eligible for the second dose get it in time. However, the vaccine shortage has slowed down the drive to a great extent.

While two to three days in the week see a good number of vaccine stocks administered, on the remaining days hardly 10,000-15,000 doses are given. On Tuesday, hardly 5,700 citizens were vaccinated at BMC centres and another 2,400 at government centres. However, with pressure building on the civic body to speed up the drive, it decided to operate the centres even on Wednesday with limited stock.

Also read: Covid-19: Daily cases up by 10,149 in India

A huge population of about 9 lakh is eligible for their second dose this month. However, with civic centres running dry, the crowd is slowly shifting towards private centres. Also, some citizens said that they could not get their doses from smaller centres over the past five days, as stock was not available.

Andheri resident Anita Mote said, "When I visited a centre near my house on Friday and Saturday, it was shut, while on Monday there was a long queue."

Meanwhile, civic officials said that as they cannot procure vaccines on their own, they have to completely rely on whatever stock is made available. A senior civic official said, "We tried to procure vaccines on our own but there was no response from the companies that have the licences. The distributors who came forward did not meet all our criteria. As we are completely dependent on the central government, we are using whatever stock is being given. We are yet to vaccinate about 33 lakh eligible citizens."

9L
No. of people eligible for their second shot this month