Vaccination error: Without a single jab, specially-abled teen gets vaccine certificate as 56-yo in MP

Team Udayavani, Jun 30, 2021, 11:23 AM IST

A 13-year-old teen has been vaccinated on paper as a 56-year-old man!

As India is yet to start vaccination for children below 18 against Covid-19, this incident comes as a shocker.

The error was detected on June 21, the day Madhya Pradesh claimed to set a record of 17 lakh-plus doses during the daylong vaccination ‘Maha Abhiyan’ marking the International Yoga Day.

The recipient, 13-year-old Vedant Dangre of Bhopal is a specially-abled child of Rajat Dangre.

Rajat said that he received a message at 7.27 pm on June 21 saying that his teenaged son has been vaccinated. “I was shocked because the country is yet to start vaccinating those below 18 and the message read that my son was 56,” said Rajat.

Vedant’s father is concerned about his son since he is already being shown vaccinated officially, which means he won’t be able to get the benefit of two doses when vaccination for children starts.

Rajat further said, “When I downloaded the certificate from the official link, it showed that the document of my son’s bank account (opened a couple of months ago while applying for disabled person pension) was used in the vaccination certificate.”

Rajat tried to get this addressed from the ward office of Bhopal Municipal Corporation to health department staff, but this is yet to be corrected.

This is the first such case. New Indian Express reported that in another part of Bhopal, Nuzhat Salim, a 46-year-old, too got a message from the government at 10.57 am on June 21 informing her she had been vaccinated. And in Satna district, middle-aged educationist Chainendra Pandey, got not one, but four messages in five minutes on June 24, informing him about vaccination of three people whom he didn’t even know.

Although,  Madhya Pradesh’s medical education minister Vishwas Sarang refused to acknowledge the blunder and maintained that nothing of the sort has happened.