No fresh registrations of healthcare workers for Covid vaccines

"Out of which 11,86,621 beneficiaries were vaccinated for 1st dose and 1,13,525 beneficiaries received 2nd dose of the vaccine as per the provisional report", the ministry said adding final reports would be completed for the day by late night.

According to Sudhir Mehta, Coordinator of Pune platform for Covid response and President of MCCIA, to achieve these numbers, they have roped in all Ganesh Mandals to volunteer for the vaccination drive in their respective localities. The next phase of Covid-19 vaccination commenced from March 1 for those over 60 years of age and for people aged 45 and above with specified co-morbid conditions. It is to be noted that healthcare and other frontline workers were eligible to receive COVID-19 jab in the first phase of inoculation.

"There has been a 24 per cent increase in HCW database in the past few days", Bhushan said in the letter.

Bhushan asked the states to discourage this practice as it was in violation of the health ministry guidelines. Given the situation, volunteers, frontline and healthcare workers, who are not covered by the vaccination drive, are now backing out, Mehta said. He said that a month has passed since the deadlines and even after starting vaccination of the population of over 60 years, provisions were made to register and vaccinate all HCWs and FLWs.

A letter written by Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, to state governments and accessed by ANI said: "Various inputs have been received from different sources that in some of the CVCs (vaccination centres), some ineligible beneficiaries are being registered as HCWs and FLWs and are getting vaccinated in complete violation of the prescribed guidelines".

In a significant devlopment, the Union Health Ministry on Saturday (April 3) said that healthcare workers and other frontline workers can no longer register for COVID-19 vacciation. "I request you to kindly direct the officials concerned for wider dissemination of this policy decision for compliance". However, universal vaccination of already registered HCWs and FLWs should be ensured at the earliest, he said.

India aims to vaccinate 4 crore people by August, but experts say the pace needs to pick up further to meet the target.