In the fight against the pandemic, Odisha’s capital city, Bhubaneswar, made history today. The city’s civic body the BMC, declared that the city will be the first in the country to give jabs to the targeted population aged 18 and up.
“A total of 18.16 lakh doses, including 7.598 lakh second doses, have been administered in the State Capital as of July 29. The target population to be vaccinated in the city is 9.7 lakh. Soon, we will accomplish our goal and register ourselves as the first city to achieve target vaccination,” said Laxmikant Sethi, Addl. BMC Commissioner.
Even while the BMC’s proactive authorities prepared the way to glory, certain fortunate factors worked to the BMC’s benefit and became the fuel for the vaccine overdrive.
“Initially, the city did see a high order of vaccine hesitancy. Many were wary about filling the consent form. In addition, the required medical check-ups like blood pressure, submission of their medical history aided the hesitancy factor in the Capital city. However, as the second wave spread at a rapid pace, the hesitancy gave way to a high degree of acceptability in the temple city.
Despite the fact that the targeted population to be vaccinated in the BMC area was a little over 3%. The overall population to be vaccinated in the State, the number of vaccination sites in the State Capital stood for over 5% of total vaccinated sites.
The figures reveal the civic body’s active behaviour. This demographic aspect has delivered a huge payoff to Bhubaneswar’s immunization drive. As it is the state’s most urbanized city the achievement is huge.
Though there was some vaccine hesitancy in the Capital City’s early days, the pace of the second wave has brought a major shift. The hesitancy was replaced by vaccine acceptability.
According to the CoWIN portal, Mumbai administered 74.51 lakh doses, Ahmedabad administered 37.91 lakh doses, Bengaluru BBMP + Urban over 85 lakh doses, Kolkata with 46.21 lakh doses, Chennai 36.3 lakh doses, Lucknow has administered 19.55 lakh doses, and Jaipur administered 20.92 lakh doses, and so on.
Although many peer cities in the country have delivered more doses than Bhubaneswar (18.16 lakh), the State Capital has enjoyed the demographic advantage. As the target size of the population to be vaccinated in the State Capital is comparatively small.
The desi vaccine had a consistent supply to the State Capital. While the State Government had been repeatedly notified of an acute shortage of Covishield dosages in the State, there was little hint of a supply-side constraint in the case of Covaxin.
The evidence comes from the data on the Covaxin dose supply to the state. As of today, the Union Government has administered 5.52 million Covaxin doses across the country. Odisha received a total of approximately 23.18 lakh doses, accounting for almost 4% of all doses distributed so far.
According to data from the CoWIN portal, the population to be vaccinated by Covaxin in Odisha (Bhubaneswar) is roughly 3.5 percent of the overall Covaxin vaccinated population in the country.
The BMC recorded the data very well and kept second doses ready. Both the doses were given priority but booster doses are more in number. So far the people only have to book slots for the first dose. The BMC in its Twitter handle informs the public regarding booster doses scheduled as per the initial dose.
This facility has made a hassle-free vaccination drive throughout the city. People are well aware of the situation and coming forward to get jabbed in time.
