75% in favour of opening Covid vax for all above 18

New Delhi, March 18 Seventy-five per cent of citizens are in favour of the government opening up the vaccination process for all above 18 by permitting private labs and hospitals to vaccinate in after-hours via appointment and walk-in, as per a survey by LocalCircles.

The survey found that false certification to people above 45 as co-morbid or qualifying individuals as healthcare or frontline workers is being reported as a malpractice.

Thirty per cent citizens say they observed or experienced some irregularities on the ground in regard to adherence to norms to qualify for vaccination.

Since the vaccination drive began for citizens above age of 60 or those above 45 with co-morbidities, there has been an increase in citizen feedback on LocalCircles where people have described how these norms are allegedly getting violated to make vaccination happen for those who don't necessarily qualify.

In the earlier phase of vaccinating healthcare workers, a few people had reported how some of the family members of healthcare professionals who weren't necessarily health care workers were also able to receive the Covid-19 vaccine dose.

It is to be noted that a vial of Covid-19 vaccine once opened for inoculation needs to be fully used within 4 hours, else the remaining doses go waste. For Covishield, each 5ml vial of the vaccine has 10 doses in total and for Covaxin, it is 10ml and 20 doses per vial. And, once opened, all the doses have to be consumed within 4 hours.

Citizens report that in cases where all doses aren't consumed, vaccine administrators are calling up their friends or families and are inoculating them with the remaining doses. Per reports, in such cases, they are being falsely qualified as health or a frontline worker just to fit the criteria. Some people have also reported that people who do not have a co-morbidity are going to doctors and are taking a fake co-morbidity certificate to fit the criteria for inoculation.

The survey received approximately 19,000 responses from citizens located in 281 districts of India. 68 per cent of the respondents were men while 32 per cent were women.

Thirty per cent of citizens say some healthcare professionals are influencing or falsely-certifying to qualify people as co-morbid or health or frontline workers.

The question in the survey that sought to understand from citizens if they observed or experienced any irregularities in regards to Covid-19 vaccine administration so far, 70 per cent of citizens said they did not experience or observed any irregularities, or don't have any experience with vaccine.

There were, however, 15 per cent of citizens saying they observed "

( With inputs from IANS )

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