The Calcutta Municipal Corporation will triple the number of Covid-19 vaccination sites from next week, civic officials said on Monday.

Five ward health clinics located in as many boroughs of Calcutta have been running vaccination sites since Saturday, when Covid-19 vaccination began across the country. There are 16 boroughs in the Calcutta municipal area and civic officials feel at least one vaccination site in each will expedite the vaccination of healthcare workers.

According to Covid-19 vaccination guidelines issued by the Centre, about 1 crore health-care workers across the country will be vaccinated first. They will be followed by 2 crore frontline workers, including police and defence services personnel.

The CMC has about 5,300 health-care workers – doctors, nurses, accredited social health activists (ASHA) and honorary health workers who visit door to door – who are eligible for a Covid vaccine, said an official.

The list of frontline workers under the CMC – such as waste collectors and cremation staff – is still being prepared. An official said the names of more than 30,000 CMC employees who would be eligible for Covid jabs had been included in the list and more names would be added.

“We are preparing to start Covid-19 vaccination in 11 more ward health clinics starting next Monday. Inspections will be conducted over the next few days but that will be a formality because most clinics have enough space to administer the shots,” a CMC official said.

Inoculation of health-care workers can gain speed if more vaccination sites are opened, the official said. Apart from that, more sites mean the sites will come closer home, making it easier for health-care workers to get vaccinated.

Because of some glitches that affected the functioning of Co-Win, a digital app launched by the Centre for Covid vaccination across the country, many vaccination sites were reaching out to recipients over the phone and asking them to turn up at the site. The advantage was that if a prospective recipient said he or she could not turn up, someone else was approached for vaccination.

“Once everything is done through the Co-Win platform, this advantage will be lost. The system will send text messages to recipients and only they can receive the doses that particular day. Those who cannot turn up cannot be replaced by others,” an official said.

“If we set up more centres, we will be able to vaccinate more people.”

The guidelines issued by the Centre say a site must have three rooms – the recipients will wait in the first, get their jabs in the second and be observed in the third for 30 minutes for adverse effects, if any.