59-year-old dodges 2nd jab of wrong vax after staff points out cert mix-up

59-year-old dodges 2nd jab of wrong vax after staff points out cert mix-up

—Umesh K Parida

15.05.2021 

A 59-year-old resident from Navi Mumbai managed to avoid getting inoculated by two different vaccines after an alert health centre staff pointed out the mix-up in the certificate.

Shirishkumar Salunkhe, a Kamothe resident, got his first dose at the primary health centre in Kalamboli, where he was given a certificate which stated that he had received a jab of Covishield. The goof-up came to light when Salunkhe’s son, Vijay, approached the Kamothe health centre for his father’s second dose.

The Kamothe centre staff told him that the batch number mentioned in the first dose was that of Covaxin and asked him to go back to the Kalamboli centre. The Kalamboli centre staff admitted the mistake and the retired Army havildar was eventually administered the second dose of Covaxin at the NMMC hospital in Vashi on May 13, as the primary health centres had run out of stock by then.

“The Kalamboli health centre’s staff did not tell me the name of the vaccine,” said Salunkhe.

“The certificate downloaded from the app for the first dose on March 18 at Kalamboli centre mentions Covishield. I had to stand in the queue for eight hours at the Kamothe centre on May 6 for the second dose only to be told that I needed to take Covaxin. After the Kalamboli staff checked out the batch numbers and confirmed, they updated the information on the app,” said Vijay.

“When Salunkhe was administered the first dose, Covaxin stock had just arrived for the first time. Therefore, there was confusion. No one consulted me about the app updates,” said Dr Ravi Kumar, who was at the Kalamboli health centre during the mix-up.