The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation’s Covid-19 vaccination drive that ground to a halt at least three weeks ago, in the run up to Durga Puja, will resume on Thursday, officials said.
The civic body has 10 Covid vaccination centres. Three of them are on the ground floor of Matri Sadan Hospital in Salt Lake EE Block, Vidyasagar Matri Sadan Hospital in Rajarhat and Deshbandhu Hospital in Baguiati.
Jabs are also being administered from seven primary health care centres, including the ones in Duttabad, Kestopur, Ashwininagar and Baguiati.
“There was a shortage in supply and we were forced to stop the drive at least three weeks before the Puja,” said an official of the corporation's health department.
Krishna Chakraborty, the chairperson of the board of administrators of the civic body, said all 10 centres would resume administering both first and second dose of Covid vaccines on Thursday.
The vaccination drive by the Bidhannagar civic body is resuming at a time the number of Covid cases in Kolkata, as well as in North 24 and South 24-Parganas, is on the rise.
As many as 244 new cases were reported in Kolkata on Wednesday. The corresponding figures in North and South 24-Parganas are 129 and 71, respectively.
Health department officials and public health experts are stressing the need to intensify and accelerate the vaccination drive against Covid during the festive season.
The civic body will also resume the rapid antigen test for Covid inside the municipal sports complex.
“The test will be conducted from 11am to 4pm and the centre will be operational from Monday to Saturday,” said Chakraborty.
The civic body has also asked the state health department to allot more doses to its Covid vaccination centres because they are vaccinating people from a large number of areas, not just residents of Salt Lake, Baguiati and Rajarhat.
Houses in Salt Lake and Rajarhat have domestic workers coming from Bongaon, Bhangar, Lakshmikantapur and other other places. They are getting vaccinated at the civic centres.