No shot, but Phagwara couple gets certificate

A Phagwarabased couple received Covid-19 inoculation certificates without getting the actual vaccine dose.

Within hours of opening of the COWIN portal for registration for the 18-plus category, Ram Naresh and his wife Priti, both aged 29, got the slot online at 2.15pm on Thursday and were asked to go to Hoshiarpur’s Shergarh or Sahri village to get the jab between 3pm to 6pm the same day.

The couple rushed to Shergarh but were told by villagers that no vaccination drive was on. When they reached Sahri around 4pm, the vaccination centre was closed. They drove to the civil hospital to lodge a complaint with the health officials but before they could do that, they received provisional certificates on their cellphones saying that they had been successfully vaccinated at Sahri village. The Qr-based certificates carried the name of the staff that vaccinated them and also mentioned the batch number of the dose.

“It came as a shock. We needed the vaccine as a safeguard against coronavirus, not for completing any formality. We knew that we will face issues in getting a second jab so we argued with the authorities to administer us the dose of the same batch, which was mentioned in the certificate. We were asked to come the next day. On Friday, after a lot of dilly dallying, the staff at the civil hospital vaccination centre administered us the first dose,” said Ram Naresh.

Civil surgeon Ranjit Singh said that inconvenience was caused due to some technical glitch in the online app.