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Names of several health workers due for a second dose of the vaccine against coronavirus infection remained missing from Co-WIN portal for a second day on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, 4,437 health workers received their second dose of the vaccine across Maharashtra, bringing total second doses administered so far to 9,116. Another 23,261 health and frontline workers got their first dose on Tuesday.
Both Covishield and Covaxin are two-dose vaccines given at an interval of 28 days to provide maximum efficacy against coronavirus. The national vaccine rollout began on January 16 and in Maharashtra, second doses began to be administered starting Monday.
In Mumbai’s Babasaheb Ambedkar Kandivali Shatabdi Hospital, Superintendent Dr Pratima Patil was one of those whose name continues to be missing from the session list. “I got vaccinated on January 16, the first day of vaccine rollout. Most of our data was collected offline because the portal was not working. We had given data to BMC for uploading the same day. But only half of the names are reflecting for second dose,” said Patil.
The portal has scheduled Patil’s second dosage for February 25, 39 days after the first dose. Ideally, the second dose follows 28 days after the first vaccine dose.
Civic officials said since data entry was manual for initial few days of vaccination, it is possible that the software has suffered technical glitches and is unable to show all names of health workers due for their second dose.
In the BKC jumbo facility, several health workers inquired when can they receive their next dose. “We can only give second doses to those whose names are scheduled in the session list for the day. Those whose second dose is due but are not listed can’t be vaccinated,” said Dr Rajesh Dere, dean of the jumbo facility. Dere added that shortcomings of the software have been communicated to BMC.
In Palghar, Medical Officer Dr Raj Guru from Jawhar Sub-District Hospital said they vaccinated 45 out of over 60 due to receive their second dose on Monday. “The remaining names were not in the session list,” he said. On Tuesday, the hospital gave second doses to 75 more health workers. “But several have been left out,” he said.
Until few days ago, vaccinators were allowed to add beneficiary names if a health worker visited a centre, even if his name was not scheduled for the day. That facility has been stopped now. “All we can do is wait for the software to schedule an appointment. It is not possible for us to do that manually in a vaccination centre,” said Guru.
Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner, said a letter detailing issues with Co-WIN software was sent to the central government. “We will write another letter to address issues cropping up with the second doses. The software is beyond our control and only the central government can fix it,” he said.
So far, Maharashtra has used 7.41 lakh vaccines on first and second doses, of them 27,324 are Covishield.
State Health Minister Rajesh Tope said there is adequate stock to immunise health and frontline workers. Across India, 15,014 people got their second doses on Monday.
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