Scores of people above 45 who turned up at vaccination centres in Salt Lake, Narayanpur, Rajarhat and nearby areas for their shots, returned home without getting the jabs because they had not pre-booked slots on the CoWin portal.
Authorities of the vaccination centres said they had no provision to register them on the spot.
From Thursday, anyone aged 45 or above could get a Covid shot. Till Wednesday, senior citizens and people between 45 and 59 with comorbidities were eligible for vaccine doses.
Several private hospitals and vaccine sites run by the Calcutta Municipal Corporation said they recorded a recipient’s personal details and administered the shot. A CMC official said they had directed all their vaccination centre personnel to not turn anyone away.
This was not the case in neighbouring Bidhannagar.
In Salt Lake, many 45-plus people had walked in to take their jabs at the Bidhannagar Sub-divisional Hospital but returned home when the authorities told them they could not register on the spot.
A senior official at the hospital said that they were doing spot-registrations for senior citizens but the facility had not been extended to people above 45 because “nearly everybody has a smartphone and doing spot-registrations for them would be time consuming”.
“Our entire process of administering vaccines will get delayed if we start spot-registration for those above 45 who walk in without registering on the portal,” said the official.
Swapan Bhattacharya, 48, a Salt Lake resident, returned home from the hospital without a jab. “My parents had taken their vaccine doses here and the hospital authorities had registered them on the spot. I thought it would be similar now but I was told I needed to register myself. I tried to do so on my mobile phone but was unsuccessful and left without getting the jab,” he said.
Bidhannagar Sub-divisional Hospital superintendent Partha Pratim Guha said it was “not mandatory” to set up spot-registration help desks for people above 45.
“There is no directive saying it is mandatory for us to set up help desks. As it is we are administering vaccines to polling personnel, policemen and three categories of the general population and there is tremendous pressure on the hospital employees. Moreover, this age group is quite tech savvy and can get themselves registered on the CoWin portal,” Guha said.
The scene was similar at the Duttabad primary health centre run by the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC).
Tulika Das, 46, a homemaker, was told spot-registration was open only for senior citizens. “They told me to register on the portal and come later on the allotted date. They said this after I had waited for a couple of hours in the scorching heat. I thought there would be spot-registration facilities,” she said.
Prakash Agarwal, 52, a Chinar Park resident, was also turned away from the BMC-run Deshbandhu Nagar vaccine site. “I was asked to come back after registering on the portal,” he said.
A BMC official said they had asked all personnel to help recipients register on the spot. “We will start an enquiry to find out why the centres turned away those who had not registered on the portal.”
At some centres, recipients were refused doses because the number of people who had registered for Thursday exceeded their capacity, the official said.