Family of Bengaluru man, who died of Covid-19 eight months ago, gets ‘fully jabbed’ message

Family of Bengaluru man, who died of Covid-19 eight months ago, gets ‘fully jabbed’ message

TNN | Dec 15, 2021, 03.46 AM IST

BENGALURU: The wife of a 77-year-old man from South Bengaluru was in for a shock when she received a message congratulating the latter for being fully vaccinated against Covid-19, eight months after his death. A message from Co-Win stated that he got fully jabbed on December 9.

Sreekantaiah Seetharaman had taken his first dose on March 10. He was due for the second dose in May, as the interdose interval was 4-6 weeks for Covishield at that time. In between, he contracted Covid and died on April 8. “This could be a bogus entry done in my father’s name which is highly questionable,” his son Vishwanath S told TOI.

“This is nothing but the government’s ways to inflate the vaccination coverage. To a man who died due to Covid, the government has sent a message saying he’s fully vaccinated against the disease! If it was a data entry error, how did it match his name and the registered phone number?” the family members questioned.

Incidentally, Seetharaman’s 75-year-old wife had taken the first dose on March 1 and the second dose in August. The couple had used the same phone number for their Co-Win registration. She was not given any certificate during her second dose vaccination at an apartment saying there were technical issues. She also received a message from Co-Win on December 8 that she had taken the second dose on the day. “There is definitely a goof-up. While we hadn’t bothered much about her vaccination certificate when she took it in August, she has now got a message saying she was fully vaccinated on December 8,” the family members said.

As per the vaccination certificates, the couple got their doses at a centre falling under the Kumarswamy Layout urban primary health centre. “There is a code mentioned in the certificate, which we don’t know if it was the same as the vaccination centre in an apartment where they got jabbed,” a family member said.

TOI has a copy of the vaccination certificate and the messages received by Seetharaman’s family.

Dr Arundhathi Chandrasekhar, mission director, National Health Mission, Karnataka, said the matter will be investigated. “We will look into this,” she added.

She said a similar case of a dead person getting a message about being fully vaccinated was reported in Tumakuru recently and when checked, it was found out to be a data entry error. “The error had crept in while typing a phone number. We also checked the number of doses administered by the nurse and it matched with the number of persons vaccinated. There was an error in the data entry, where there was a wrong entry of two digits. It was an entry against a wrong person’s name,” she added.

Dr Chandrasekhar said currently, healthcare workers are visiting houses for vaccination.

“At home or near home vaccination drives are going on. The workers note down the names, contact details of the beneficiaries and enter the details on the Co-Win portal when they return to their offices,” she said.