Bhubaneswar: The state Health department Wednesday issued norms for providing on-site registration of persons in the 18-44 years age group for Covid-19 vaccination. The department, however, has requested officials to plan vaccination sessions judiciously.
Vaccination for the 18-44 age group is now confined to five Municipal Corporations and municipalities of Khurda, Puri, Bargarh, Kalahandi, Nabarangpur and Koraput due to limited supply of Covid-19 jabs while its extension is also expected.
“In case of sessions exclusively organised with online slots, towards the end of the day, some doses may still be left unutilised in case the online appointee beneficiaries do not turn up on the day of vaccination. In such cases, on-site registration of a few beneficiaries may be necessary to minimise the vaccine wastage,” the norms said.
It also added, “Even though CoWIN provides for features such as registration of up to 4 beneficiaries with a mobile number, facilitated registration and appointments through applications (such as Arogya Setu and Umang and through the Common Service Centres etc), people requiring facilitated cohorts facility and those without access to the internet or smartphones or mobile phones, may still have limited access to vaccination.”
Hence, the notification said, the feature for on-site registration has been enabled for the 18-44 age group on CoWIN. However, this facility is available for government vaccination centres and not for private vaccine centres. “Districts and medical colleges must decide on the opening of on-site registrations/facilitated cohorts registration and appointments for 18-44 years age group based on the local context, just as an additional measure to minimise vaccine wastage,” it said.
The department has asked Collectors and officers concerned to issue instructions to the District Immunisation Officers on the issue. “It is advised that sessions with a mix of online and on-site slots may be avoided as far as possible. Some of the vaccination centres may exclusively be designated for organizing fully reserved sessions. Alternatively, fully reserved and fully online sessions may be organised on different days,” the norms said.
Only a small proportion of the slots published for online appointments may be kept as reserved slots for on-site registration/appointment for minimising the wastage of shots.
Jabs at workplaces
The Health department Wednesday said that the family members of the employees of private firms can be vaccinated if a workplace vaccination drive is arranged by the employer. However, the onus of procuring the doses lies with the employer and the private hospitals with whom the enterprises plan to tie up. If the vaccination centres are set up in government departments, the vaccine doses for people above the age group of 45 years could be taken from the Central government quota while the doses for 18 years to 44 years could be taken from the state government, said the department.
