Police Commissioner, DM kick-off 2nd phase of Covid-19 vaccination in Ggm

Gurugram/Noida: As the second phase of COVID-19 vaccination began in Gurugram — for frontline workers — Police Commissioner KK Rao and District Magistrate Yash Garg took their first dose of the vaccine on Thursday. Over 500 police officials were subsequently vaccinated during the day.

Health Minister Anil Vij was also in Gurugram for the beginning of the second phase and expressed hope for increased vaccinations in the coming days.

The Gurugram Health Department has been able to inoculate over 22,372 health workers so far in the district.

Having achieved reasonable success in its first phase, the District Health Department is now preparing for the second phase COVID-19 vaccination drive in which it plans to inoculate police officials and all government workers especially the frontline workers whose services have been crucial in dealing with the challenge of COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences.

According to officials, 5,500 officials from Gurugram Police, 900 home guards, 1,200 special police officers (SPO), 6,500 workers from Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), 2,000 workers from Panchayati Raj and 500 from the revenue department will be given their shots. On their part, the Gurugram Police will also be pitching in considerably to ensure that their personnel show up for their jabs. As per the list prepared by Gurugram Police, over 1,500 personnel above 50 years have been identified for vaccination.

For law enforcement officials, vaccine centres have been set up at the Gurugram Commissioner's office, Traffic Tower, Police Lines and Manesar and Sohna police stations.

"We have been able to get a list of the number of volunteers who want to get vaccinated. We hope that we will be having enough vaccines to meet our target," said Dr Virender Yadav, Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Gurugram.

Despite challenges and a slow start, volunteers for vaccination has increased with the health department claiming that there have been only 25 cases of adverse effects following immunisation. However, one person had died days after getting their vaccine but her death has not been attributed to the vaccine, according to government officials.

Gurugram currently has 50,000 doses of Covishield vaccines and 4,200 of Covaxin vaccines — stored at the main cold storage facility in Pataudi.

Meanwhile, on the fifth day of vaccination drive, Gautam Buddh Nagar recorded a turnout of 48.52 per cent, which is lowest among all the districts of Uttar Pradesh. It was a drop of nearly 20 per cent for the district from the last drive, while it had remained one among the lowest scoring districts of the state.

While the health department had increased the number of booths to 58, the target was to vaccinate 6, 810 health workers. Of the total numbers, just 3, 304 HCWs took the jabs.

With inputs from rahul singh