Low turnout for vaccination upsetting: Govt
NEW DELHI: There are at least three states where fewer than 40% of people turned up for Covid-19 vaccination, top government officials said, calling hesitancy among doctors and nurses in getting jabs “upsetting” and issuing appeals for them to come forward.
The officials said the three days of vaccinations have shown that adverse reactions were lower than what has been seen globally and reiterated specifics about the country’s adverse effect monitoring mechanism that they said was robust enough to catch any problems.
According to data released by the Union government, only about 50% of people identified for vaccination during each session were on average turning up. The situation was particularly bad at some places. In AIIMS Delhi, for example, only 8 people were given shots on Monday.
Aayog member VK Paul, addressing a press conference with health ministry officials, said the concerns about adverse effects and serious problems appeared to be unfounded, negligible, insignificant as the data showed that “we are in a situation of lot of comfort”.
“We would like to reassure you with data that you have seen that these two vaccines are safe, they do not excite undue reactogenicity and are being accepted increasingly. These two vaccines are highly immunogenic,” he said.
“We are not fulfilling our societal responsibility if a vaccine assigned to you is not being taken. The whole world is clamouring for a vaccine. It is sad that doctors, nurses and healthcare workers are refusing to get vaccinated. I request you to please accept the vaccine,” he said.
He added that it is “upsetting” that “doctors, nurses and healthcare workers are refusing to get vaccinated”.
Officials said concerns over the vaccines’ safety appear to have deterred many people. “Initially, health care workers were very keen to get the vaccine. But then because of the infodemic, because of things doing the rounds on social media, because of side effects being highlighted more than what they were, it created a lot of anxiety not only among healthcare workers but also in public at large,” said Dr Randeep Guleria, the director of AIIMS, in an interview to HT on Monday. Hesitancy was reported among some beneficiaries in the run-up to the January 16 launch of the vaccination drive. Groups of doctors said they were apprehensive or would not prefer to get doses of Covaxin, the vaccine made by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech. This dose has not yet been tested entirely in Phase 3 trials, and the manufacturers don’t know how effective it is in preventing Covid-19. The other vaccine, Covishield, developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca and manufactured by Serum Institute of India, has proven its efficacy in human trials.
Two interns at Delhi’s RML Hospital, who asked not to be identified, said on Monday they were aware they could walk in and get the shots, but expressed concerns over lack of long-term data.
In UP, the state government on Monday issued a notice to a government hospital in Kanpur where only 40 people were given doses on Saturday. The state is carrying out immunisations only two days a week, Thursday and Friday from this week onwards.
The problem appears to have been made worse by reports of some adverse reactions.
Out of those vaccinated in India so far, 0.18% recipients had adverse events following immunisation (AEFI), while 0.002% had to be hospitalised.
These are fairly low, in fact lowest so far as we know in the world in the first three days,” said Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan.
Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry are the three states/ Union territories that reported lower than 40% turnout, officials said at the briefing. On the contrary, nine states, including Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, are among the better performing states/UTs with over 70% coverNiti age. “Better performing states in Covid-19 vaccination coverage include Lakshadeep (89.3%), Sikkim (85.7%), Odisha (82.6%), Telangana (81.1%) , UP (71.4%), Rajasthan (71.3%),” he said.