Tamil Nadu's turnout for Covid-19 vaccine stays low for second day

Tamil Nadu reported a thin turnout for Covid-19 vaccination on the second day of the inoculation campaign, as people stayed home for a long weekend and some expressed their concern about the shot.

As many as 12,684 healthcare workers were vaccinated Saturday, compared to facilities created for 16,000 people. The Government Medical College Hospital at the Omandurar Government Estate in Chennai on Sunday had only a handful of people at vaccination centres that can handle a hundred people at least.

Some Medical students turned up at the Chennai hospital, getting the Serum Institute’s Covishield vaccine. At Salem’s government hospital, only six people had the vaccine. Tamil Nadu did not report any technical errors during vaccinations.

State Health Secretary Dr J Radhakrishnan, who was among doctors vaccinated on Sunday, said the inoculation campaign would pick up. “We don’t go by a daily vaccination target. Our vaccination drive is based on demand,” said Radhakrishnan. “Our main focus on Day 1 (Saturday) was to ensure there were no adverse effects and we are not pressured by the daily target approach." 

P Balaji, the dean of Chennai's Government Stanley Hospital, said healthcare workers had gone to their hometowns to celebrate Pongal and they will be vaccinated when they return. Stanley Hospital has vaccinated two of its 25 registered nurses yet. Some nurses said that they will wait till doctors are vaccinated and others said their families had pressured them not to take the shot.

An official at a government hospital in Chennai said that several healthcare workers were apprehensive and had decided to wait before taking a vaccine. Some of them had switched off their phone. The hesitancy is mainly due to the fear about safety and the fact that these vaccines came about at such a short span of time, said the official who didn’t want to be named.

In Tamil Nadu, 16.8 per cent healthcare workers took the Covid-19 vaccine on State. The State has the capacity to vaccinate 16,600 people a day but only 2,783 got the shot on January 16: the most in Chennai (348) and the least in Perambalur (2).