20 pvt hospitals in city can vaccinate their staff
MUMBAI: Twenty private hospitals across south Mumbai have now been permitted by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to start vaccination centres for coronavirus, to inoculate their healthcare staff. These vaccination centres at the selected private hospitals will not be open for any other walk-in beneficiaries or the general public, as per the decision taken by the civic body. These hospitals will start vaccination centres for their staff either from Tuesday or Wednesday.
BMC is currently vaccinating healthcare workers as part of phase one of the vaccination drive that began on January 16, and frontline workers as part of phase two of the drive, which began on February 4.
Until Saturday, 114,207 beneficiaries have been administered the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine across 23 hospitals and jumbo Covid-19 facilities in the city. Of these 90,034 are healthcare workers, and 24,173 are frontline workers. BMC will start administering the second dose of the vaccine to healthcare workers on Monday, which marks 28 days from the day they started receiving their first dose.
On Sunday, a team of officials from civic public health department conducted inspections of 20 private hospitals across south Mumbai, to check if they qualify to become vaccination centres for their healthcare staff. Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner in charge of the public health department, said, “All 20 private hospitals qualified. We have invited their staff for training sessions on how to administer the vaccine. Five staffers per booth, per hospital, will be trained by BMC. Whosoever comes up, can attend the training. After which, they can start the vaccination centres.”
Global Hospital, SL Raheja Hospital, Breach Candy Hospital, Kokilaben hospital, Bombay Hospital, Jaslok Hospital, ESIC Hospital, are among the private hospitals permitted after Sunday’s drive. Space, technical manpower and storage capacity for vaccine vials were the main criteria for the qualification.