Civic body awaits Centre’s guidelines for Phase 3 of vax

MUMBAI: Considering the sudden spike in the number of new Covid-19 cases, doctors are pushing for the commencement of the third phase of the mass immunisation programme for elderly citizens and those with comorbidities. Citizens aged above 50 are most vulnerable to contract Covid-19 owing to their underlying health conditions.

However, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) cannot start the third phase without the Centre’s nod. Civic officials said they are yet to receive guidelines for the third phase – expected to begin from the first week of March.

“When we started the first two phases of the inoculation, the Centre had given us guidelines on who the healthcare and frontline workers are, who should be administered the jab as well as the criteria for their health check-ups. But we haven’t received any such guidelines for the third phase yet,” said a senior civic official.

As HT had reported earlier, in a meeting held with civic officials last week, state Covid-19 task force officers emphasised on the need to start the third phase. “It generally takes over two weeks after the first shot to develop antibodies to fight the virus. Thus, the sooner we start the mass immunisation process, the faster we can stop its infection rate among senior citizens,” said Dr Gautam Bhansali, consultant physician at Bombay Hospital who was part of the meeting.

BMC claims that during the door-to-door survey under the ‘My Family, My Responsibility’ drive, it had recorded details of citizens with comorbidities such as tuberculosis (TB), hypertension and cardiac ailments. “A person may have more than one comorbidity, such as TB along with hypertension. But we don’t have that bifurcation. Also, many go to private hospitals for treatment, so we do not have that data for cross verification,” said the official.