Chennai has less takers for vaccine despite high-profile campaign

Chennai, April 23 (SocialNews.XYZ) The Greater Chennai Corporation has failed to achieve the target of 60,000 vaccinations a day it has set for itself, with the city's people not showing much interest in inoculating themselves.

The corporation had conducted a webinar on Tuesday which dwelt with all aspects of vaccination to allay the fears among people. It plans to conduct more such webinars to improve the level of awareness among the people.

The Chennai corporation is operating 400 walk-in centres for all those who are above 45 since the past 45 days. A total of 12.42 lakh city dwellers have already been vaccinated.

The death of Tamil comedian Vivekh after a massive heart attack was attributed by some as being a "side effect" of vaccination. A brand ambassador for Covid-19 vaccine, Vivekh had taken the jab on last Thursday but succumbed to a massive heart attack the very next day.

While Chennai Corporation Secretary G. Prakash had clarified that Vivekh's death was in no way connected to vaccine, people have still some apprehensions on this.

The vaccination drive on holidays was less and this has affected the average number of jabs.

Health officials admitted that people don't want to take vaccination on a holiday mainly owing to the fact that their holiday mood may be spoilt following the after effects of vaccination like mild head ache, fever and running cold for some.

Thomas Mathew, a retired official with Ashok Leyland, told IANS: "Of course people have apprehensions but most of the senior citizens including me have taken ,vaccines, I think that the younger generation between 45 to 55 are showing reluctance as they don't want to take a rest for one or two days if they get fever or cold following vaccination. More awareness programmes are the need of the hour and the society must achieve herd immunity to get protected from Covid."

Source: IANS