City

Chandigarh may start vaccination for above 18 on May 14

Chandigarh is set to start vaccination of those over the age of 18 against Covid on May 14 this week. According to a senior UT official, the vaccination for people aged 18 and up will begin on May 14.

Just 33,000 vaccine doses have authorization by the Centre for the 18-45 age group, despite a demand of 1 lakh vaccines.

This age group will not be able to register on-site, and they will be vaccinated against the allocated slot. The UT has yet to obtain the doses from the Central government. So no slots for this age group have been open on the CoWIN portal for 18 plus.

Manoj Parida, UT Advisor, declared that vaccination for the 18-45 age group would be phased due to the staggered distribution of doses.

Meanwhile, the city’s vaccination campaign has ended. Between April 24 and April 30, 37,146 doses have been on record. While the number of doses given to beneficiaries fell to 32,418 the following week. This observation of decrease after a five-week continuous increase in the number has been on record in the area.

In the UT, the rate of adverse events following immunisation is 0.051%.

Mohali has a drive-through vaccination station.

In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the district administration has set up additional facilities for drive-through vaccination at two locations beginning Wednesday. The venues are the District Sports Complex in Sector 78, near the Sohana Gurdwara, and Piccadilia — The Theatre Café in Mullanpur, New Chandigarh.

The drive-thru vaccination move is an initiative by Jagdeep Sehgal, SDM. He said that a trial run would take place on Wednesday. Moreover, that the facilities would be open to the public on May 13. As per SDM, the project has been following the increasing number of cases in mind. As well as the need to preserve social distance.

Mansi Ghai