AHMEDABAD: For the city and state, the active cases of Covid are at a four-month high. However, the rise in the cases has had no major bearing over Covid vaccination.
The statistics indicated that in one week, the booster dose jabs dropped by 21%, whereas the first doses have increased by 14%. In fact, the booster doses are at a three-week low at 1.41 lakh with approximately 20,000 doses administered daily.
"Primary reason for the reluctance to take the third dose is lack of fear. After the second wave, the citizens were concerned about their well-being, and thus we saw huge queues last year. With the first and second doses completing nearly 100% coverage of the adult population, this year's spike is relatively milder and hospitalization is rare," said a city-based physician.
"The pandemic has taken the form of an endemic with symptoms like body ache, weakness, low-grade fever with occasional complaint of cold."
Cost is another factor, as 90% of the booster doses out of 40 lakh were administered by the government set-up to the healthcare workers, frontline workers and senior citizens.
There are still fewer takers for the paid jab, said health department officials.
Analysis of the booster doses trend also threw an interesting trend - Banaskantha district had higher booster dose recipients than Surat and Vadodara cities. Likewise, many districts overtook Rajkot city in getting the third jab as the city reached 1 lakh booster doses recently.
