Railway Vaccination Centre- Facts and Fictions.

Introduction:

• Highest body controlling India’s Covid vaccination program is known as NEGVAC ( National Expert Group of Vaccine Administration for Covid-19).
• The Day to day vaccination is regulated by an App- COWIN.
• District collectors are directly responsible for appropriate vaccination of citizens residing within their jurisdiction.
• For Bhubaneswar, Commissioner BMC is the nodal. He is assisted by the BMC City Program Management Unit (CPMU) a special purpose unit located at master canteen.

Vaccination was conducted in a staggered manner as decided by NEGVAC in 3 phases.

The First Phase of vaccination ( Risk phase) included the HCW, FLW, and Citizens at risk: all seniors and those 45+ers with medical conditions. For railways, NEGVAC has accepted only RPF as FLW categories, none else.

In this phase, all beneficiaries are pre registered including the senior citizens.

Railway Efforts-

Central hospital, ECoR and all the three Divisional hospitals were registered by Railway Board in the COWIN as Covid Vaccination Centre.

The railway vaccination centre at the Central Hospital started vaccinating from the day one of India’s vaccination initiative ie. January 2021 and still continuing.

The Second Phase started in April with all citizens above 45. Eligibles have increased. This has greatly increased footfalls and waiting period inside the hospital campus.

PCMD did not want that healthy employees should visit and stand in queue in the hospital that caters to covid positive cases.

Worksite Vaccination–

With constant pursuance by PCMD, we went to CPMU for getting permission for a workplace vaccination. With heavy lobbying we could register a second vaccination centre at the worksite ie. rail sadan. On 11.4.21 the first Railway WCVC ( Worksite CVC) started at the UdayGiri hall for employees ONLY above 45. But within 4 days the attendance dwindled and we had to shut it down.

Third phase Controversy–

Third phase was announced to start on 1st of May and was mired by controversy what with Center State discordance, inadequate stock of vaccine etc. Government has expanded the cohort to increase all citizens above 18+. This expanded the eligible cohorts tremendously. The second doses are due also. The demand supply gap for the country is simply not viable.

( Therefore, NEGVAC has never included citizens in 18+ in its recommendations.)

Right from the beginning, states were advised to purchase vaccines to cover their 18+ program. Vaccines for the 45+ were continued to be supplied by centre free of cost.

Odisha Pulls ahead :

While 18+ vaccination has not started in the neighbouring AP and WB, Odisha Government left all states behind when the first paid consignment of Covaxin landed at BBS airport from Hyderabad and 18+ vaccination was flagged off in BBS on 3rd of May. Third phase has not started anyhere in the state also
Covishield consignment failed to arrive. 18+ People from outside BBS poured in to the capital city.

From the beginning,State has insisted that the vaccine should be available only to candidates registered online.

It was anticipated that railway beneficiaries will be deprived in spite of contributing so much towards infrastructure arrangements.

I wonder
Should we have stopped our vaccination centers at this point ? Could we ? Of course Not.

It was not possible to opt out of 18+ vaccination while we are still continuing vaccination of 45+ and our Second doses are due.
…
…
Here we got Insider information that despite all the ground rules, BMC is arranging on site vaccination for Odisha Assembly and Secretariat people.
Then why not one more for railways ? We asked them. No answer.

So we proposed to allot us vaccines in the name of our existing worksite vaccination centre to by pass the App.

We were lobbying for weeks but the response was not encouraging. App based Vaccination started but we did not get the green signal for the onsite program.

An unexpected call-

On 5th of may, I received a call from the vaccine Depot manager located at Gadakana that a consignment of 100 doses in the name of Railway WCVC has arrived in the depot. It was already 10.30 am and half of session is already over. Thus the railway vaccination centre at community hall, Rail Vihar started on 5/5/21.

Again PCMD with his foresight has advised to shift all the vaccination centre at the Hospital and Rail sadan to the spacious campus of the Community hall.

Railway WCVC continued for 15 days. 1500 doses vaccines were distributed with on-site registration. Is it not sufficient to cover all the eligible employees below 45 of HQ and Workshop ?

BMC Commissioner was changed all of a sudden.

The earlier Commissioner has ambitious projects like Drive-in vaccination program, Vaccination at Residence of indisposed and Work-site vaccination. But all of these required enormous stock of vaccine. Vaccines were in short supply.

I believe some foul play at the Assembly Center may have travelled to the highest office and heads had to roll. ( Of course I may be wrong.)

The new commissioner’s first agenda among others was to reduce the daily vaccine demand of the city.

He stopped all Drive-in and At-home vaccination programs from 19th. Also all on-site vaccination Centers are converted to Online from the 20th morning. He also reduced the session size from 200 doses to 150 doses with effect from 20 may. By these austerity measures, he was able to scale down the vaccine demand of the City to 1000 doses from the earlier 2000 doses per day ( in the 18+ group) Last I heard they are extending the drive in vaccination above 45+ with on Line slot booking. On-Site is banned anyway.

The Law and order problem on a Sunday

A note on the law order situation that happened on Sunday afternoon:
During this process of switching on off line centres in to OnLine, Central Hospital AN session was inadvertently made visible to public for 16th of May. This was an error at the BMC CPMU. 90 people booked their vaccines online at Railway CVC. Sunday is a vaccination holiday everywhere in BMC. Our centre was also locked. People who have come for vaccination had to return . A law order situation arose. I must put it on record that there is absolutely no fault from railway side. Neither it could have been prevented. This was a computer glitch for which BMC CPMU is fully responsible. )

The Bottom Line-

From 20 May onwards there will be no more onsite registration or slot booking at BBS. It will be On Line every where. Both the railway centers are now searchable by Pincode, and availability of slots are displayed in the App. Two screenshots are given below.

The Central Hospital people have worked really hard to bring vaccination to our door step. Neither Nalco, nor Indian Oil or any other Central government organisation were able to break into the BMC CPMU. Our vaccine supply was totally at the whims and fancies of CPMU during the whole period. They started the WCVC at rail vihar community hall, all of sudden without informing us and stopped it all of a sudden without any message. Actually the officers there also do not have a plan that they can act upon.

Lastly, in the government

“People who matter, do not pick up our phone.

People who lift our phone actually do not matter.”