‘Employee ID card must to get Covid vaccine’
The civic body is also collecting hospitalwise data of HCWS who registered on COWIN with IDS for cross-verification
MUMBAI: After an incident in which a doctor tried to get his family vaccinated out of turn, employee identification (ID) cards will be mandatory for beneficiaries. To ensure no unauthorised candidate avails Covid-19 vaccine, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has instructed vaccination centres to check employee ID of potential beneficiaries. The civic body is also collecting hospital-wise data of healthcare workers (HCWS) who have registered on the centralised application COWIN with their employee ID number for crossverification.
Last week, a doctor from Amravati came under the scanner when he included 19 family members and friends in the list of HCWS to be vaccinated at the hospital where he works. This is in violation of the Centre’s guidelines, according to which the first phase of the vaccination drive is for HCWS from public and private medical facilities followed by frontline workers (FLWS) in the second phase, which is currently underway. Each beneficiary receives two shots and all beneficiaries are being vaccinated for free.
To prevent situations similar to what happened in Amravati, BMC is adopting measures to verify beneficiaries’ identities. Until now, beneficiaries could verify their identities by showing government-issued ID cards such as Aadhaar and PAN cards. However, now they will have to show their employee IDS.
“As the immunisation programme has not been opened to the public yet, all probable beneficiaries must show their employee IDS at the vaccination centres to get inoculated. We have issued instructions to all vaccination centres,” said additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani.
BMC has also asked public and private hospitals to submit lists of names of HCWS who have registered on COWIN app for vaccination with their employee ID numbers. “If we do not find the match in the data, we will ask hospitals for a clarification,” said Kakani. He also requested the public to inform the civic body if they hear of any illegal vaccinations. No such violations have been reported in Mumbai so far.
Dr Archana Patil, director at the Directorate of Health Services said hospitals would be trusted to provide accurate data of HCWS upon registration.
Health activists said that since employee ID was not needed to register for vaccination on COWIN, some may have misused the facility. “There are thousands of small local hospitals and clinics. The COWIN app, therefore, should have added the option to include individual employee IDS of the staff which could have stopped such illegal activities,” said health activist Dr Abhijit More.
COWIN app should have the option to include individual employee IDS of the staff members DR ABHIJIT MORE, health activist