Bengal health department is planning to showcase Diamond Harbour municipality as its success story in the Covid-19 vaccination programme as the civic body is soon set to become the first fully vaccinated urban body in the state.
“All eligible people (over 18 years of age) of Diamond Harbour municipality have received the first dose of Covid vaccine. About 90 per cent of the population have been administered a second dose of vaccine, too. Soon, the civic body would be the first completely vaccinated municipality in the state,” said a senior government official.
According to health officials, the success of Diamond Harbour municipality would be showcased as the civic body has proved that if vaccine doses are made available, the state authorities can administer them to all eligible residents in the state.
Diamond Harbour’s achievement has strengthened the argument of chief minister Mamata Banerjee that if Bengal received the required number of vaccine doses from the Centre, the state would have administered the jab to most of the eligible people by now, sources said. Mamata has also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for more vaccine doses.
“So far, only over 3 crore people could be given the first dose of vaccine while we have to administer a vaccine to 7 crore people. It is clear that the picture would have been brighter had the Centre sent more vaccine doses,” said a Nabanna official.
“The civic body that has 30,000-odd people over 18 years of age and could convince all eligible people to come forward and get vaccinated. This is the reason why it also could be the first civic body across the country to be completely vaccinated,” said a source.
Sources said the civic body authorities and health workers worked hard.“Vaccination camps in all wards were open all day in the past two months...Health workers also reached the homes of those who could not come out of homes to vaccination centres. Continuous effort from all quarters helped us achieve success,” said a civic body source.
“It is now clear that we can give vaccines to all those eligible if we get vaccine doses on time as our health workers are dedicated and hard-working,” agreed another official.