CHENNAI: At least 35 school campuses in Chennai are now being temporarily used as Covid-19 vaccination centres to boost the drive. Zonal officials said this helped bring people from the surrounding localities as it solved the mobility problem.
“We make announcements about the vaccination using loudspeakers and people in the surrounding areas come to the camp after hearing it,” said a zonal official. For people not able to come by themselves, the corporation arranges for an autorickshaw.
“Our FOCUS volunteers apprise us of the details of patients and door number. We send an autorickshaw to pick up the patient for vaccination and also drop them off,” an official from Zone 4 said.
Both private and government/corporation schools are being used for this purpose. Chennai Corporation Commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi said the schools have a sprawling campus, which is needed to enforce social distancing.
“They (the schools) have many rooms as well. So, we can do registration in one room, blood-pressure checking in another, and vaccination in another,” he told Express, adding that the schools were chosen for public convenience.
Corporation officials said that they had already come up with innovative measures such as bulk vaccination programmes, door-step vaccination, in-office vaccination, hotspot vaccination. Also, arranging for vaccination centres in schools have helped boost the drive and reduce vaccine hesitancy.
“For example, in the PAK school, at least 100 people come a day,” an official from the Tondiarpet zone said. Apart from officials, local MLAs regularly inspect these vaccination centres as well.
Chennai city has vaccinated 23.21 lakh people so far, which is about 30 percent of the population. The city is also leading among all the other metros in the country in vaccinating people with two doses, according to sources.