Bengaluru, Feb 11: Karnataka Women seem to be more open to vaccination than men as Co-WIN app data suggests that 2,89,787 women have been vaccinated so far in the state while only 1,74,545 men have been vaccinated.
This also mimics the national trend where 39,56,198 women were vaccinated against 28,90,676 men.
However, officials say that since a majority of health workers like ASHAs, ANMs, staff nurses are women, it is plausible that more women are vaccinated than men and it may have nothing to do with hesitancy among men.
As per Covid patients' data in the State, Men have been infected more (5,79,298) compared to women (3,63,914). Even in mortality rates, a higher number of men have succumbed to the disease (8,757) than women (3,484).
In the first state sero-survey, 30 percent of male respondents were found to have been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus over 22 per cent women, out of the 16,585 individuals surveyed.
A gender-wise beneficiaries break-up sourced from the Co-WIN dashboard as on February 10 showed that 6,00158 women were registered for vaccination in the state, 96,254 more than the number of men.
Health Commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pandey said, "We have more female grassroots health workers than male workers. We have around 40,000 ASHAs, 15,000 female ANMs, nurses, health professionals and paramedics who are mostly women. Anganwadi workers are also women. We need to check vaccine acceptance rates in men though."
"It is true that men have been affected more by Covid than women. Then why are they not coming forward to get vaccinated? We should probably look at targeting IEC materials at men who seem to be the vulnerable group when it comes to Covid."
There are 1.3 lakh employees in the Health department of which regular employees are 69,000, NHM staff is 25,000, and the rest are contract workers, where women outnumber men. "In Arogya Soudha itself, there are only 45 per cent who are vaccinated. We are trying to convince and increase our own numbers," he added.
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