As the severity of Covid-19 has come down, people are not interested in taking the precautionary dose even though the government announced giving it free for all.
HUBBALI: People in the Dharwad district are not coming forward to take a booster dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and the district has achieved only 17 per cent of its target. But strangely people in Hubballi city, even when they have not taken the dose, are getting messages about being vaccinated with the third dose.
To curb the coronavirus pandemic, it was advised to give the Covid-19 vaccine to all eligible citizens. The experts advised taking two doses of vaccine to fight the virus. After the third wave, it is also advised to take a booster or precautionary dose. But as the severity of the disease has come down, people are not interested in taking the precautionary dose even though the government announced giving it free for all.
Dharwad district had a target of vaccinating 14.44 lakh eligible people and the health department vaccinated 104.51 per cent of people with the first dose and 105.53 per cent of the second dose. But when it comes to precautionary doses, the district has a target of 13,82,257 doses, of that 2,34,884 (16.99 per cent) people have been vaccinated and there is a poor response.
Interestingly, people, who have not taken the precautionary dose, are getting messages that they have successfully vaccinated with the precautionary dose. Some people also downloaded certificates from the CoWIN portal.
After receiving such messages, people have been alleging that the government, to showcase a big number of vaccinated people, has been involved in creating fake data by using health department workers. The union government has been saying that it has vaccinated more than 200 crore doses, but don’t know how true it is.
A senior health official said, due to typing error, some wrong mobile numbers might have been entered into the portal, which sent a text message and generated a certificate too. “No one asked the health workers to maintain wrong data, we will check with the concerned officials and staff and ensure no wrong entry in the portal,” he said.
