Covid vaccination drive witnesses low turnout

The daylong nationwide coronavirus vaccination drive that began on Tuesday to cover some 7.5 million people received lukewarm response across the country.
Visiting various vaccine centers in Dhaka, lower presence of vaccine-seeking people was observed throughout the day.
Even in some places, loudspeakers of local mosques were used in inviting more people to get vaccinated. But things did not improve much.
Those who went to the centers faced trouble because of the scorching heat coupled with ongoing area-based load-shedding of power.
The FE correspondent found only 10 people in the line of taking vaccine at East Rampura High School centre.
Responsible persons in the centre said people were not coming to take the jab even after being requested through mike of the local mosque.
"It took maximum 10 minutes to get inoculated today as there was no crowd of people that we observed earlier," Badol Hossain, who took the jab at East Rampura High School, said.
Director General of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Dr Khurshid Alam visited the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) point where he expressed his dissatisfaction over poor turnout of people.
Presence is less at the health centres as people are not interested to get vaccinated with booster doses due probably to the low infection rate, he told the reporters.
Replying to a question about whether they will be able to achieve the target, he said it can be said after the end of the day.
"If the target is not achieved, the campaign will continue for two more days," he added.
"We are trying our best to make people aware through publicity and the media can play an important role in this regard. As Covid-19 cases are on a rising trend, people should take their booster dose," he said.
However, official statistic over the daylong vaccination activities was not available till filing this report at about 8:00pm.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh recorded 879 new cases along with 8 deaths due to the viral disease across the country in the last 24 hours till Tuesday morning.
With the latest figures, the total number of coronavirus infections rose to 1,998,291 while the death toll enhanced to 29,249.
The infection rate was 9.66 per cent as the daily caseload came from medical screening of 9099 samples from 880 labs across the country.
In terms of fresh infections, Dhaka district, including the metropolitan city, accounted for around 50 per cent of the daily caseload registered in the last 24 hours.
During the same period, a total of 1,693 people recovered from viral disease, taking the total tally of recovery to 1,928,650.

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