The Calcutta Municipal Corporation will on Sunday resume bookings for second doses of Covaxin through the WhatsApp chatbot that was designed to save people the harassment of standing in queues for hours to get the jabs.

Those who want to take the second dose can type ‘Hi’ and WhatsApp it to 8335999000. This will initiate a series of responses to which the person must keep replying to complete the booking. The chatbot will start issuing appointments for the second dose at 10am on Sunday.

“We will again accept bookings for the second dose through the Whatsapp chatbot on Sunday. The bookings will open at 10am,” said an official of the state e-governance mission team (SeMT), which designed the chatbot.

After registering, the person has to carry the WhatsApp message confirming the booking to the vaccination centre. Bookings through the chatbot give a specific time slot when the recipient has to arrive at the centre. This will help them skip queuing up outside the centres.

The following are the steps to book a slot:

⚫Send ‘Hi’ to 8335999000

⚫Send the date of first dose

⚫Provide details of ID

⚫Select the venue

⚫Get the time slot. Your booking is complete

⚫ Reported on Friday that even after the exclusion of a majority of Covishield second doses — after the gap between two doses was extended to 84 days — people were still queuing up outside jab centres since early morning. The chatbot will help people avoid this.

But only three centres opened by the CMC — Roxy cinema building in Esplanade, South City International School on Prince Anwar Shah Road and Bidhan Sishu Udyan in Ultadanga — are accepting bookings through the chatbot. These three places are exclusively meant for those who are yet to get their second doses of Covaxin. Without a slot, no one can take a shot at these three clinics run by the civic body.

The WhatsApp chatbot first took bookings on Monday but all the available slots were exhausted in an hour, said the SeMT official. Many had complained that though the chatbot replied saying slots were available, they could not book one despite trying multiple times. “We have found that about 9,000 people are left in the city who are yet to get their second Covaxin dose. We are hoping that we will be able to offer slots to all of them from Sunday,” said the official.

But one problem that will persist is those not conversant with WhatsApp will not be able to avail of this. They will still have to queue up outside other vaccination centres to get their second doses. The only hope is that if most people opt for the chatbot, the number who have to take it from other centres will fall sharply.

A list of CMC-run centres that are administering the second doses of Covaxin and Covishield are available on the Twitter handle of the civic body.