Officials blame tech flaw in CoWIN for poor vaccination coverage among kids in Patna

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Government officials have blamed the poor Covid-19 vaccination coverage among children in the age group of 15-18 years in Patna for a technical flaw in the CoWIN portal through which the vaccination is being administered in India.

“The CoWIN portal captures the children above 17 years of age but below 18 years in the age cohort for adults (18 years and above) despite their registration for vaccination in the 15-18 years children age group. As such, the number of vaccination of adults is still increasing, whereas that of children is somewhat static,” Patna civil surgeon Dr Vibha Kumari Singh said.

“We flagged the issue with the state health department during a recent review meeting on vaccination. Senior officials have assured us they would take up the matter with the Center and correct the CoWIN system,” Dr Singh said.

The CoWIN portal, while registering a beneficiary for vaccination, records his/her year of birth and not the month, said another official associated with Covid-19 vaccination.

“The age data doesn’t make a distinction between a person born on January 1 and another born on December 31 the same year, hence the anomaly,” said Mansoon Mohanty, team lead, Patna district resource unit of Care India, which partners the state government in its health initiatives.

Patna district immunization officer, Dr SP Vinayak, said, “The number of adult vaccination in the 18-45 years age group has increased by 1.5 lakh in the state capital after January 3, when Covid-19 vaccination for children was introduced. This despite the fact that Patna had saturated adult vaccination with first-dose coverage of 87% last year itself. It clearly points to the fact that vaccination of children above 17 years of age but below 18 years is getting mixed with the adult age group.”

Kishanganj, Saran and Patna are among Bihar’s worst performing districts as far as Covid-19 vaccination coverage among children is concerned, said health officials.

Kishanganj has first-dose vaccination coverage of 38.19%, Saran (47.67%) and Patna (47.86%), as per the state vaccination data on the CoWIN portal on February 19.

Jehanabad (47.98%), Bhojpur (48.66%) and Katihar (49.07%) were the other districts among 38 in Bihar with first-dose vaccination coverage of less than 50%.

Bihar has achieved first-dose coverage of 57.17% against a target population of 83.46 lakh among children in 15-18 years age group. The second-dose vaccination coverage against those eligible till February 19 was 34.93%, as per government data.

Interstate and interdistrict migration of students for studies, inflated enrollment in government schools for largesse while some students actually study elsewhere; the myth that children should wait to take the jab just at the onset of the perceived fourth wave of the pandemic; the possibility of children having acquired Covid-19 infection from their parents or other family members and have to now wait for 90 days to take the shot, were among some other reasons Mohanty attributed to the low vaccination coverage among children.

Patna has a vaccination target population of 4.93 lakh among children of whom 2,37,245 had taken their first dose, while 81,057 were fully vaccinated with both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine as on Saturday.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ruchir writes on health, aviation, power and myriad other issues. An ex-TOI, he has worked both on Desk and in reporting. He over 25 years of broadcast and print journalism experience in Assam, Jharkhand & Bihar. …view detail

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