Vaccination centres across the country drew huge crowds on the 5th day of the mass vaccination drive, creating a chaotic situation everywhere and raising the risk of the virus transmission.

After a reality check at different vaccination centers, UNB correspondents saw long queues of people standing close to each other with little or no regard to social distancing rules.

Hundreds of jab-seekers, both male and female, turned up at the small vaccination centres with or without online registrations, overwhelming its medical staff.

The medical staff at the vaccination centres and the vaccine aspirants pointed fingers at each other because of mismanagement and slow pace of vaccination.   

According to the UNB correspondents, the number of staff was too inadequate to smoothly vaccinate such a huge number of people.

As the ruthless Delta variant of Covid-19 keeps spreading like wildfire, Bangladesh on Saturday kicked off another phase of its mass vaccination drive aimed at inoculating 35 lakh people in six days.

However, the drive has not been free of controversies as mismanagement and anomalies across the country became a topic of discussions in the last few days.

Even on the very first day of the drive, UNB reported about the chaotic situation which arose at the city’s Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital.

Nearly 4,000 vaccine seekers, including men and women, were seen waiting in queues in the corridors of its first and second floors with the vaccination going on at a snail’s pace.

Read: Covid kills 237 more in Bangladesh as Delta strain takes hold

Outraged by the “mismanagement”, the vaccine seekers said the situation turned worse as there was no arrangement for women to stand in any separate queue.

Tired of the long wait in the queue, the irate crowds got involved in quarrels with Ansar personnel and the hospital staff.

Some of them were seen trying to push each other to enter the vaccination rooms venting their anger amid chaos.

Inside the vaccination rooms, it was found that only two to three nurses were providing shots while another two or three medical staff were checking vaccination registration papers. They had to struggle a lot to cope with the situation for lack of manpower.

UNB Chattogram correspondent reports that a huge crowd was seen at the vaccine centres in the city.

The vaccine seekers were seen waiting in front of the vaccination centres in long queues amid rain, causing immense sufferings to the people standing there for taking covid jabs.

According to the District Civil Surgeon office, some 10 people die of Covid-19 in the city on average every day while 800-900 are being infected.

During a recent visit to some vaccine centres, the UNB correspondent found hundreds of people waiting in front of Chattogram City Corporation General Hospital centre in Sadarghat area of the port city.

Rahim Sobahan, a 57-year-old man, said, “He had been standing in a queue since 8 am and got the chance to enter the vaccine centre around 11 am.”

The same scenario was seen in the city's Bandar, EPZ, Patenga, Halishahor vaccination centres.

Hazera Begum, another vaccine aspirant, said “The vaccine centre is overcrowded and I can’t understand whether I came here to secure myself from Covid or being infected with Covid.”

Zonal Medical Officer of Bandar EPI zone, Dr Hasan Murad Chowdhury, said “We’ve asked people not to come to the centre without getting any SMS from the government but people are coming to the centres after completing their registration. The Covid situation may take a serious turn if things like these continue. If the authorities concerned fail to take any immediate steps, then the Covid situation may turn into a catastrophic one.”

Civil Surgeon Dr. Sheikh Fazle Rabbi, said: “Many people thronged in front of the vaccine centres at a time, creating a chaotic situation, though there’s a scope to take a jab throughout the day. Anyway, the authorities concerned have taken steps to maintain discipline at centers.”

DGHS report on vaccination

According to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), some 14,769,447 people have received the first doses of Covid vaccine as of Tuesday across the country.

Read: Vaccination drive in Bangladesh: Procurement of 60 mln Sinopharm doses gets nod

Of them, 58,200,63 people received AstraZeneca Covishield while 50,255 received Pfizer, 68,27,383 Sinopharm and 20,71,746 Moderna vaccines.

During the period, 49,02,173 people received the second doses of vaccine across the country and 46,58,997 of them got AstraZeneca Covishield, 27,590 Pfizer, 211,800 Sinopharm and 3786 Moderna vaccine. 

So far, 2,832,0519 people have completed their registration for taking covid jabs till 5 pm on Tuesday.

On Saturday, Bangladesh kicked off another phase of its mass vaccination drive aimed at vaccinating 35 lakh people in six days.

Covid jabs will be administered simultaneously in 4,600 unions, 1,054 municipality areas and 433 wards of the city corporations, Director General of Health Services Dr ABM Khurshid Alam told the media on August 6.

Vaccine Stock

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal at a virtual meeting on Wednesday said, “We’ve to vaccinate some 13.82 crore people of the country. We need to buy a total of 27.65 crore vaccine doses. We have 2.55 crore vaccine doses in our hands and the remaining ones need to be collected.”