Elderly scramble for the vaccine in Kerala

KOCHI: At least four elderly people who were waiting at a vaccination centre collapsed as people scrambled for the jab amid rising cases of COVID-19 in Kerala on Monday.

More than 2,000 people who had registered online and got a ticket for vaccination in the alloted time slot have formed serpentine queues at the centre early morning.

However, the system developed a snag and the vaccination began almost three hours behind the schedule at the Jimmy George Indoor Stadium.

Some arrived as early as 7:00 am, two hours before it was supposed to begin, and the queue outside the stadium grew fast.

By 10:00 am, it was total chaos and none were keeping the mandatory physical distance from each other and many removed their masks puting them at the risk of infection.

“I got the time slot between 10:00 am and 11:00 am and it’s past 12:00 pm now. I’m still standing under the scorching sun,” one elderly man said, trying to cover his head with a cloth.

“There’s no police or any officials to keep the order or advise us what’s going on here. I have a lot of health problems but I’m waiting here as I’m not sure if I get it later.”

When the vaccination finally started, many complained that the officials were called in their dear ones out of turn disregarding the registration and the time slot they got.

All those who are aged above 45 years, who constitute almost one-third of the state’s population, can get inoculated at the designated centres.

So far, 5,801,268 or more than half of some ten million people in this age group have received the first dose of the vaccine and 1,045,794 of them had the second jab.

The southern state was reporting an alarmingly high number of infections for more than a week now, resulting in hospitals running out of beds.

The government has now asked the private sector, which has more than 70 per cent of the state’s hospital beds, to increase their capacity.

It added 28,469 more cases to the infections Sunday in yet another high in daily case tally with a test positivity rate of 22.46 per cent.

In districts like Ernakulam, the TPR has crossed 26 per cent and the state now has 218,893 patients and most of them are in home isolation.

Meanwhile, an all-party meeting convened by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and held online decided not to go into a complete lockdown.

Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala said the United Democratic Front (UDF) that he heads would avoid demonstrations on Sunday when the state elections results are out.