The young population of the city — 18 years to 44 years — has turned to private players to get vaccinated against Covid-19. With private hospitals managing to get their stock of vaccines from manufacturing companies directly, the group is getting appointments online for the same as the public vaccination centres are currently shut for them. In a month’s time since the drive was opened for the age group, a total of 2.38 lakh beneficiaries have been inoculated and majority of these have been in the past 10 days at private hospitals.

The vaccination drive began for this age group from May 1, though the civic body was not prepared to inoculate them. On May 12, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) announced that the drive for the age group will be shut. However, four private centres had started to inoculate citizens and many from this age group started going to them in large numbers.