The journey of a commoner who goes through the vaccination drive in India.
I want this commoner journey to reach to every individual of this country and abroad, so they can understand what it takes to get a vaccination in this country, rich with culture, heritage and blah blah. It has become a habit, whenever we fail, we start talking about ancient cultural values and heritage.
Unfortunately we are living in twenty-first century and medical infrastructure which was never in place since the very beginning to cater One Hundred and Thirty Crore Indians , whatever remains are there has been exposed to the core.
While writing this I am under the influence of much needed angst.
Disclaimer: I stay in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.
I am a law abiding citizen.
I care for my country.
For the past several days I was trying to find a vaccination slot for my mother so that she gets her long pending second dose of COVISHIELD vaccine.
Like a toddler as they take baby steps, I would prefer to follow the same suit and unravel the experience step by step, without missing even the minutest detail. Hence would appreciate your patience. After all we are talking about the greatest health facilities of Uttar Pradesh as per World Health Organization data or rumored to be while such news pieces are being telecasted on several news channels as Flash News or Highlighted News Stories.
On 14th May 2021, during morning hours, I booked the vaccine slot available at Hapur Community Health Clinic, Uttar Pradesh scheduled for 15th May 2021. This will be the second vaccination dose for my mother. This place is a bit far, forty kilometers from my place. I trust the government arrangements and facilities. I decided to book a day cab and headed towards the destination. The vaccination dosage would start being administered from 9 am, hence I started much before that and reached the place by 8:45 am. The place had handful of people. There was a nurse sitting at the Nurse Station. I verified if the vaccination would start by 9 am and she replied in affirmation. After few minutes around 9: 10 am, she asked who are here for the second dose and a few along with me came forward. She confirmed COVISHIELD and requested to wait for a few more minutes. She kept trying to reach out the lady via her phone who was the in charge of the vaccination drive and had not arrived till till now. Now there were close to thirty people roaming on that floor. I was curious as to why government staff has not arrived on time, as the basic idea being, the sooner they start the vaccination drive, the sooner people can leave and the place won’t remain crowded and chaotic. This way one could escape the disease which is air borne as per the latest research data, and moreover we really don’t know who among us is COVID- Positive or COVID- Negative. “It is an Invisible Enemy”, as Head of the Country keeps chanting in his speeches.
Psychologically, I was scared as it has been more than twenty-five days; I have not stepped out of my house. Mentally, I was more concerned about my mother. There has already been a death in my family last year, and I am yet to come to terms with it. After all, never in our lives we have talked about Death so often.
I was reminded of the last day hustle and numerous thoughts were hovering in my mind while I struggled to book the vaccination slot. It reminded me of early 2000’s days when for Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who wants to Become a Millionaire) Program, we would remain restless and would keep on dialing the desired phone number via landline to punch in the correct answers, but the phone line would be busy most of the times. We would stay awake till the wee hours of the night.
It’s 2021, and we are facing the same scenario, reminds me of present Tatkal Train Bookings struggle, before we try to login to the IRCTC website, the system would logout at multiple occasions on its own. Before we could act and enter the alphanumeric captcha which would be rejected multiple times, and proceed to the final step, we could see the train seats are already full.
The same phenomenon was happening and I was rejoicing the experience. Rejoicing, yes, you read that right. Nothing has changed.
I still am not sure, why they have introduced captcha on this vaccination drive site, and trust me, try it for yourself, it will ask you to enter multiple times, before it proceeds and takes you to the final landing page. I doubt the Government’s intention here. The idea is to make the vaccination drive easy and rather not complicate it that an educated person struggles for more than one hour or so, just think about the uneducated class or people who are not well versed with English language. How they will cope ? I am sure that they must be paying their hard earned money to the Internet Café guys to fill up their vaccination drive form. Never knew this was the strategy to increase more jobs and engage the people of India?
As I saw the crowd number increasing at the vaccination center, I sided myself and stood aloof. Was this a good decision to come all the way out to this village? These thoughts were piercing my heart as I patiently along with others waited for the responsible staff members to arrive. At Government Institutions in India, you can’t really ask why the staffs have not arrived on time. People generally don’t ask that tough question here. We are quite used to their working style. As I kept instructing my mother to cover her face, even when she has double mask all over her small face, I was thinking,
What-If we get impacted by this virus?
What-If required medicines won’t be available?
What-If beds aren’t available?
What-If oxygen won’t be available?
What-If ventilator beds won’t be available and so on and so forth.
The world’s best and greatest site https://www.cowin.gov.in/ with maximum number of downloads and hits as claimed by Indian Media and Press clearly mentioned and highlighted that COVISHIELD is the only dose available at this center and nearby areas. I trust my Government but I am not a blind follower, Mind It!!
https://www.cowin.gov.in/ website is created with a vision. The vision is to provide accurate data so the people of India are at peace. They have integrated OTP factor, so when you sign in, an OTP would be sent to your registered phone number, once you punch in, you will reach to the landing page. Now, you can Select your State, Select District or have an easy Search using your pin code as well. Once you have selected your choice of hospital; this is the tricky area as majority of hospitals are already filled and you need to act as an ace detective Byomkesh Bakshi to find a spot for yourself, based on your judgement, trusting the fact that the data reflecting on the site is true. The vaccine dose available (COVISHIELD or COVAXIN) at centres is precisely mentioned. Once you have mentally prepared to travel a long distance for your vaccine, as mentioned above you might witness your enemy named CAPTCHA. As you enter the correct mirror image, it won’t accept, until you are exhausted to the core and if you are lucky, your slots would remain available. Participants of Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire) would win here, as they already have the Fastest Finger First experience. I smell foul here. Is this a new scheme to employ Tatkal Train ticket agents who are out of job and now have been intelligently shifted to Co-Win site as many states confirmed that outside vaccination centers, multiple agents would guarantee you a confirmed spot only after you agree to pay a heavy price for it. I am not amused at all. I live in this country, so I know how it functions.
Note: One cannot book for the vaccination drive slot for the same day, even till evening it can be observed that more than hundred doses being available at multiple centres. The page always gives a warning message stating, you have to select a future date.
Do we have a count on what is happening to those vaccines? Transparency? Ohh, I forgot, it’s a hard thing to expect..
Finally at around 9:35 am, a lady in charge arrives. There is neither repentance nor remorse for the waiting customers. She announces the unexpected.
Her clear words being, Only Covaxin doses are available and that will be administered. Covaxin? Did I hear it correctly? How come? Covaxin was never mentioned while we placed our booking at world’s greatest CO-WIN site. It clearly said COVISHIELD. I was enraged and so were others. We started cross questioning and they were like, I don’t know? I don’t Care? And we Indians have this terrific ability when everything falls apart, Just shift the blame on to others.
When questioned about the World’s greatest site CO-WIN and why it had wrong information, the staff was it’s not something they should know? When questioned, who should know? They directed that the CO-WIN Uttar Pradesh staff are seated in Lucknow, which is capital of Uttar Pradesh State and they feed data accordingly. Even when it is a wrong information.
I was furious and felt helpless as crowd was getting frantic and was on one another to showcase their angst. Social Distancing? What does that mean?
There was a police officer in plain clothes who kept on requesting that he is a frontline worker and he should be administered with the second dose of COVISHIELD vaccine, however it was also of not much avail.
I requested him that if we can go together and escalate the issue at a high level. He had a few valid points to the vaccination in charge lady staff as she had announced that the Government has changed the law last night itself, hence they have to follow the mandate. Seriously ? Is this a joke?
This was the complete mismanagement. What about people like me who travelled eighty kilometers trusting the data on the website was correct? I asked them, why they could not send a single SMS or e-mail since they capture all the relevant details on their greatest website CO-WIN. The staff did not have any reasonable answers.
I felt deeply for the frontline policeman who was also pushed aside. He told me, it won’t make much difference even you reach out to the Head of the CHC Hapur Hospital. How he must be feeling from within as he was arguing on the basis of valid points?
Was the COVISHIED vaccine available till the night before? he enquired loudly. The staff spoke in affirmative. If yes, then where it has evaporated, since the illogical mandate of Government has came late night, correct? They didn’t know that they had just spilled the beans, but still remained adamant on the unavailability of vaccines.
This is a complete mismanagement, I shouted on the top of my voice as I started leaving the premises by taking the stairs. The doctor who had arrived by now told me that you can ask for the refund for the long distance you have travelled. I was like, seriously, will you be able to pay for the cab. I suggested him to talk sensibly as these kinds of petty discussions would lead to nowhere. I was left with nothing but abuses for this sick Government mismanagement whose only agenda is let the people run from one place to another and in the end of the day the Head of the country in a lates post would announce that he feels the pain that citizens are going through? Seriously? That’s what you can say, where is the roadmap, where is the plan, where is the strategy? It’s like a Tuglaqi Farmaan, you can announce anything, any day and let the people suffer.
I wish every IT service or product based organization or any generic organization across India should behave the same way, the way the Head of this Country is behaving.
Let’s take an example in layman’s term: This is a quarterly appraisal cycle. So, an underperforming employee is asked by the manager if he has any issues or would he like to address his poor performance as it’s impacting the organization’s growth. The employee would respond,
“I know and I feel that I am not performing well. I feel that, I can sense that. I can empathise with you”.
The management would be happy with the answer and let him continue for another three months
Its half yearly appraisal, the organization has incurred losses and had to hire an additional employee, since this underperforming employee is performing worst than the last quarter, and his reply remains the same.
“I know and I feel that I am not performing well. I feel that, I can sense that. I can empathise with you”.
This keeps continues for years and years, and each and every organization across India would not take any actions and keep increasing their yearly pay even the performance is at its worst.
Will any of the organization survive? THINK..TAKE YOUR TIME..
The same we, Indians are feeling right now. HELPLESS..
1.Why there is no performance cycle for these illiterate politicians?
2. Why there is no education criterion?
3. Why there is no retirement criterion?
4. Why there is no sacking criteria based on performance? And when I say performance, it should not be a mouth job, but actions which would speak. If speaking made things easy, everyone on this planet would have been a multi-millionaire.
While I was getting down taking stairs, the doctor who could hear all kinds of frustration in my voice as I remained clueless for the mismanagement and the chaos the Government is creating; he looked at me and was ready to address my queries. He questioned,
Do you know why this vaccination time period, which was earlier four weeks to six weeks, later increased to six to eight weeks and now finally increased to eight to twelve weeks has been increased?
My response was — Because there is a dearth of vaccine.
Exactly, when you know all the answers, why get frustrated?
I continued, But this mismanagement, if the Government is incapable to suffice, they should say it clearly; we would never had come so far, exposing ourselves, risking ourselves, do you realize in my society there have been deaths in double digits due to COVID.
He looked at me and smiled.
Do you know that you and other people are abusing, insulting the doctors and the support staff for last one hour or so, If I have been in your place, I would have done the same; but do we have the authority? Authority to control, authority to communicate directly with the Government?
I said, No, you don’t have.
But still I argued, Why would you mention a vaccine dose, that being second dose, when it’s not available; can’t just Government use their world class IT skills to block those fields so the user can't select and book for the vaccine for the time being.
He smiled again and continued — All of this data is being controlled from Lucknow. There are series of misinformation which are not being tallied by the hospital itself and being fed. He shared his experience , For last two days, other three hospitals, which does not have vaccination dosage in first place, registered and valid users are reaching the hospitals and creating a ruckus. They are right in their place, but Option Kya hai hamare paas?
Where, we, doctors, nurses or hospital support staff at fault? We are mere pawns who is being abused by each and everyone, even when putting all the risk, blood and sweat. Is it justified? There is a problem and as a educated person you must be aware.
The wise words, Don’t run for vaccine, it’s of no use.
The second dose which was valid for four weeks, now it can be taken in twelve weeks, Do you understand the efficacy, how protective it can be?
No One Knows. So be at Home, That’s the best way to stay safe. Until things are in your control completely.
I could understand his plight and maintained throughout the discussion that it’s the Government who is at fault, it’s their mismanagement for which we, People of India are paying the heavy price.
But still one thing we had handy, we could have avoided the whole dilemma situation.
The Phone Number… Yes, you read that right!!
One final thing, I would like to ask. I could have avoided coming in the first place, if this hospital had a valid phone number reflecting on Google or on Government Portal if any.
He asked another staff to provide me with the hospital landline phone number. The other person smiled and said the person who used to manage this Community Hall Hospital has gone to Lucknow. I was not sure how to react? I asked, did he take the phone along with him.
He didn’t say a word but his body language enacted of helplessness.
I, we, every citizen of India could have avoided this situation, if and only If the Government had installed a valid telephone line to these centers. And if somebody raises a question, it’s already installed; I challenge them to show those details on Google or try reaching out on those numbers. Trust me, you can never be able to access those numbers and hence as a result would be forced to travel such long distances which will be full of unpredictability where you are counting your options in percentage, 70 % I might get the vaccine, 30% I won’t get for various reasons or a vice versa, depends on how you start your day and how you feel for the respected Government that very day.
So, this is my story which took place on 15th May 2021.
This is my struggle diary and you never know what else is in store for us.
Keep praying for us, as we, citizens of India are On Our Own..
