Summary:
Thousands turned up for the first dose of Covishield, even though only 120 slots were available at each site on a first-come, first-served basis.
This led to overcrowding and health officials had to seek police help to manage the crowds, leaving many exasperated.
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Since Delhi has shut down many vaccination centers due to a shortage of vaccines, people have become anxious on getting themselves vaccinated this has led to early crowding near the vaccination center in Gurgaon.
A large number of people in the 18-44 age group started queuing up from as early as 6 am on Wednesday outside 37 government session sites in the city for the walk-in Covid-19 vaccination drive.
Thousands turned up for the first dose of Covishield, even though only 120 slots were available at each site on a first-come, first-served basis.
This led to overcrowding and health officials had to seek police help to manage the crowds, leaving many exasperated.
With only 4,400 Covishield doses available, many had to return without getting jabs.
Some had arguments with cops managing the sites, while others said they should get tokens for Thursday’s session as they couldn’t get vaccinated despite waiting for hours.
Vaccinations at the government sites began at 10 am, but recipients reached the session sites around 6am to get tokens for inoculation.
Police and civil defense teams reached the sites around 9 am to manage the crowd and many were asked to as the slots were full at several centers by 10.20 am.
The session sites at the primary health centres (PHCs) in sectors 10 and 31, Patel Nagar and Mullahera were the most crowded, with around 600 people turning up at each of them.
“I failed to get a token even though I reached the Sector 10 PHC at 6.30 am.
This is not fair at all.
They can at least give us a token for the next vaccination session,” Rakesh Kumar, a resident of Sector 39.
Meanwhile, Dr Manish Rathi, deputy medical officer at Sector 10 Civil Hospital, said: “We had to ask for more policemen as we witnessed a huge crowd.
People were not willing to leave the premises and they started arguing with the staff about vaccination.