Heavy crowds at vaccination centres

Heavy crowds at vaccination centres

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Ahmedabad:04.05.2021

Amid confusion at the Tagore Hall vaccination centre — where police were called at around 10.30am to maintain calm among those queued up to get vaccinated — and at two other centres in western Ahmedabad, vaccination went peacefully. Several Amdavadis complained that they had no idea about how many people would turn up at a centre.

“Vaccination itself will become a super spreader event. Information on how many people will come to a particular centre and at what time is key to arrest further spread of Covid.,” said Jay Shukla, a 25-year-old banker.

Till evening, according to the CoWIN dashboard, some 22,077 Amdavadis got their jabs. Enthusiastic youngsters and those in their early forties were seen lining up. At around 11am, the drive reached its peak with 7,029 getting vaccinated. By 10.30am registrations were closed at 55 of the 210 centres Satish Chawbey from the Jodhpur area, who had gone to a local government school for vaccination, said, “Paramedics at the vaccination centre spend several minutes uploading information on to CoWIN and forget that the icebox won’t maintain the proper temperature for the vaccine for that long. This bureaucratic process should have a better way out. It could have serious implications.”

AMC officials in wards like Stadium, Navrangpura and Naranpura claimed that many people had turned up for offline registration at the 32 vaccination centres and made the situation next to impossible.