Some of the busiest Covid vaccination centres of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) that used to have serpentine queues till two months back are now having to return some of the vaccine doses as there are not enough recipients, civic body officials said.
As a large population of Kolkata has already received both doses of the vaccine or at least one dose, the number of people flocking to the centres has come down, officials said.
Besides, with more vaccination centres having opened in the neighbouring districts, people living there are no longer coming to centres in Kolkata, said civic officials.
Some clinics where serpentine queues used to be noticed regularly in the early days of vaccination were the health clinics Ward 107 in Kasba and Ward 82 in Chetla, both in south Kolkata. Both these clinics also doubled as Covid vaccination centres. But in the last two weeks, both clinics have had to return two to three vials on multiple days. Ten people can be vaccinated from one vial.
The Ward 107 health clinic was receiving about 350 doses on an average in the last week. “They had to return 20 or 30 doses on several days,” said a KMC official who is part of the team that manages vaccination from KMC-run centres.
The health clinic in Ward 82 was given about 550 doses on an average during the last week. While the clinic had to return two or three vials on most days, there were some days when only about half the doses were used.
According to the CoWin website, 80,92,477 doses were administered in Kolkata till 7pm on Monday. Of these, 48,29,599 were first doses and 32,66,878 were second. KMC officials said nearly 30 per cent of doses administered were to people who are residents of districts neighbouring the city.
The civic top brass has asked KMC health department officials at the borough and ward levels to do a survey to identify those who have been left out of vaccination programme.
Field level health workers of the KMC are visiting neighbourhoods, especially the slums, to motivate residents who are yet to receive the vaccine shot.