HUBBALI: People in Dharwad district are not coming forward to take booster doses of the Covid-19 vaccine and the district has achieved only 17 per cent of its target. Meanwhile, many people in Hubballi who have not taken the booster are strangely getting messages that they have already been vaccinated with the third dose.
To curb the coronavirus pandemic, it had been advised that the Covid-19 vaccine be given to all eligible citizens. The experts initially advised two doses of the vaccine to fight the virus. After the third wave, a booster or precautionary dose was also recommended.
But as the severity of the disease has come down, people are not interested in taking the precautionary dose even though the government has announced that is will be given free to everybody.
When it comes to precautionary doses, Dharwad district has a target of 13,82,257 doses. Of those, only 2,34,884 (16.99 per cent) people have been vaccinated.
Interestingly, some people in Hubballi, who have not been vaccinated with the third dose, have managed to download vaccination certificates from the CoWIN portal.
After all this came to light, some people in the district have been alleging that the government has been involved in cooking up fake data with the help of health department workers to showcase a high success rate.
How reliable is the Centre's vaccination data given all this, they went on to ask.
A senior health official said, due to typing error, a few wrong mobile numbers might have been entered in the portal, which led to a text message being sent and the generation of a certificate too. "No one asked the health workers to maintain wrong data. We will check with the concerned officials and staff and ensure no wrong entry is made in the portal," he said.