Fast Vaccine Bookings Leave Most Of Rourkela High & Dry, Night Wait in Odisha Villages

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Rourkela: It’s a case of finger first for Steel City residents with online slots for COVID vaccination getting exhausted within minutes of being opened.

As a result, a majority of beneficiaries, especially those seeking the second dose, are left disappointed.

For instance, the Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC) on September 4 announced slot bookings for September 5 to 13 at 9 am. Within three minutes, all the slots for around 40,000 doses were booked.

The situation is even worse in rural areas of Sundargarh district with villagers reportedly waiting overnight outside community health centres (CHC) to get their jabs.

Sources said there is a scarcity of vaccine doses in the district and many beneficiaries have to return empty handed. So, villagers brave nightly queues in the hope of getting a coupon as soon as a vaccine centre opens the next morning.

Volunteers accused the district administration for the chaos. With the fear of children being the most vulnerable during the third COVID wave, the administration was focused on ramping up paediatric care facilities instead of streamlining the vaccination drive, they said.

Besides the demand for doses has also gone up with vaccine hesitancy declining among rural population, sources said.

On the other hand, the administration has denied reports of shortage of vaccine shots. Chief District Medical Officer (Sundargarh) SK Mishra said they have received 1.30 lakh additional doses from the Centre and another 60,000 shots arrived on Monday evening.

According to the administration, the projected adult population in the district is around 17.87 lakh and around 8,000 jabs are administered daily. So far, 8,44,309 persons have received the first shot and 2,51,839 have got both doses.