The West Bengal government health department has revised procedures for private organisations running Covid vaccination centres throughout the state in the light of fake immunisation drives that were busted after a man posing as an IAS officer was arrested for organising them.
A meeting was held on Monday afternoon after which the state health department came up with a fresh set of rules that have been framed to ensure that beneficiaries are not duped. Private organisations running vaccine centres would have to keep an inventory, specifying the source of the vaccines and cold chain maintenance mechanism for storing the vaccines. Besides, each organisation will have to send a daily update to Swasthya Bhawan on the number of doses being administered at the camp.
A nodal officer, to be appointed by the organisation, will have to submit weekly reports to the health department on the safety and tolerability of the vaccine. A list of people who took the vaccine, either first or second dose, would have to be updated every Sundays.
For running camps, permission has to be obtained from the local police station, along with an approval from the chief medical officer of health in Calcutta and district health authorities. The price of vaccines must also be displayed at the site.
Clubs and private firms that want to organise vaccine camps will have to apply to the district health authorities and also submit an agreement letter from the organisation appointed to administer the vaccines. The organisers would also have to submit a plan for post-vaccine care at the centres and submit it to the health department.
Before camps become operational, health department officials will carry out an inspection. How the vaccines would be transported will also have to be shared in advance with the authorities. Ultimately, permission for running a vaccine centre would be given only after heath department officials inspecting the site are satisfied that every single norm has been adhered to.
On Sunday, Swasthya Bhawan had asked for a list of all vaccination sites being run by private hospitals. Jolly Choudhuri, the nodal officer for vaccinations in the state, had pulled the plug on all outdoor camps and off-site Covid vaccination centres for Monday till the list was submitted to the health department.
Police investigations into the fake vaccine camps organised by Debanjan Deb, a Calcutta resident posing as a joint commissioner of Calcutta Municipal Corporation, revealed that more than 1,500 people were administered an antibiotic, Amicacin, that was purchased in bulk from Bagri market. Deb also had a huge stash of fake labels of Covishield, a vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.
One of the vaccine camps that Deb had organised was held near the Kasba police station. Yet, police did not have a clue that fake vaccines were being administered at the camp till Trinamul MP Mimi Chakraborty raised a red flag. She received her vaccine there, but got suspicious after she did not receive a message on the Co-WIN platform to confirm her status as vaccinated.
The new state government guidelines specify that organisers of all vaccination camps must use the Co-WIN web platform and the authenticated code from the app would have to be displayed prominently at the site.