Covid-19 vaccination: Low turnout of medical personnel, healthcare staff in Telangana

Hyderabad: Telangana state on Friday, the second day running, recorded very few medical personnel and health care staff working in government hospitals turning up to receive their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Even though the vaccination target for the day was cut to 28,433 individuals, only 12,944 turned up to get their vaccine shots, representing only 45.5 per cent of the targeted shots for Friday.

On Thursday, 27,682 beneficiaries, a shade over half of the targeted 48,447, received the vaccination jabs.

While some of the problems in terms of the low vaccination rate, officials said, was due to problems with the CoWIN website where details of the beneficiaries have to be updated, there appears to be a lot of reluctance among healthcare workers to get the shots.

According to a senior official of the health department, big teaching hospitals saw low turnouts.

When compared to the rest of the country, Telangana state is among the four states that have crossed the one lakh mark in total vaccinations since the drive was launched on January 16. The other states to hit this mark are Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Odisha.

As on Friday in Telangana state, a total of 1,10,248 individuals had received the vaccine representing 64 per cent of the intended beneficiaries. No serious adverse events were reported on Friday in the state and there were only five cases of mild reactions among the vaccine takers.