Phone calls, lack of time slots lead to crowds

A healthworker at Vile Parle’s Cooper Hospital receives a vaccine jab. Pic/Shadab Khan

No messages and only phone calls led to chaos at various vaccination centres across the city as there was no time slot allotted to beneficiaries who ended up turning up at any time that suited them. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had earlier said that the drive would be organised process and they were ready to handle all the possible glitches. However, phone calls to beneficiaries were made at the last minute, resulting in crowd mismanagement on day one.

Initially, the municipal authorities had said that messages would be sent a day before, probably in the evening, but with the list of beneficiaries reaching the health department late, phone calls were made late at night or early in the morning and, even then, no time slots were shared, resulting in crowds.

A civic official said, "The list of the names came in late and so we had to work accordingly, we managed to call everyone on the list through the night and in the morning as well. They were told to come in any time between 9 am and 5 pm. We saw a crowd mainly at the start of the drive and later, as they were hospital staff, they kept walking in whenever possible." While major hospitals such as Sion and KEM saw staggered crowds, Cooper hospital saw a huge turnout in the morning and remained quiet through the day.

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No. of vaccination booths in city