Polling officials likely to get an early COVID jab

According to a Corporation official, a meeting was conducted on Wednesday to plan and organise the drive. “Presently, COVID vaccines are given to the frontline workers belonging to the health, police departments and conservancy workers. When elections are announced, officials from engineering and revenue departments will be deployed for poll works,” the official said. 

The official added that the Election Commission has directed the civic body to administer the vaccine to polling officials to make the election safer. Earlier, the civic body had increased the number of polling booths to 6,153 at 1,053 locations from 3,764 polling booths at 901 locations. 

The civic body had recently sent missives to media houses seeking the list of journalists and camerapersons on the field for vaccination. Meanwhile, another official said that only around 44,000 healthcare and frontline workers had taken the jabs in the city.