THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Tension prevailed at a vaccination centre at Neyyattinkara on Saturday after people came in large numbers after receiving misinformation on a spot vaccination drive. More than 500 people came to the Government Junior Basic School for the vaccination in the age group of 18 to 44. However, the health departid people misunderstood that it was spot vaccination drive.Though many people reached the centre at 8am, only 10 health officials were present there.
“Around 240 people were vaccinated till 1pm and they stopped it for one hour. In the morning, only four staff were there to control the crowd and there was no adherence to social distancing norms. The trouble was caused by the failure of the health department in aptly informing people about the drive. At least they could have informed the police on time about the vaccination. I fear this rush might lead to a super spread of Covid,” said T Ashok, a software engineer who reached the centre.
“We were not informed of the huge crowd. We came to know about the situation only by 11am. So more police officials were deployed there to tackle the situation. A total of 400 people were vaccinated till 3pm and the process got streamlined when more staff of the health department came for the support,” said P Sreekumar, Neyyattinkara inspector of police.
Meanwhile, Arun Prasanth, official spokesperson of Neyyattinkara General Hospital, said: “Recently, a newspaper reported that anybody can directly approach the vaccination centre for getting the jab without registering in the CoWin portal. But we have conducted only the usual vaccination drive through online booking. The vaccination of the general hospital has been carried out at the school for the past two months due to the lack facilities at the hospital,” he said.