Administration of Covid-19 vaccines to frontline workers in the city began at 16 clinics of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation on Saturday. The state health department has planned to add more sites by the middle of the week.
Officials in the department said vaccination of frontline workers, which was to start on February 2, had not gathered pace yet.
The Union health ministry on Saturday asked states to increase the pace of Covid-19 vaccination so that all health workers received at least one dose by February 20 and all frontline workers received at least one dose by March 6.
Officials in the state health department said achieving the target was tough and they had to scale up vaccination of frontline workers.
An official of the department said over 3.5 lakh health-care workers, out of 6 lakh who have been registered, had been given the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by Saturday.
There are about 2.5 lakh frontline workers in the state, said another official.
Inoculation of police personnel will start on Monday at Calcutta Police Hospital. “More sites will be added in two to four days to vaccinate frontline workers,” said an official of the health department who is involved in the vaccination programme in Calcutta.
The Covid-19 Vaccine Operational Guidelines, issued by the Centre, lists “personnel from State and Central Police department, Armed Forces, Home Guard, prison staff, disaster management volunteers and Civil Defense Organisation, Municipal Workers and Revenue officials engaged in COVID-19 containment, surveillance and associated activities” as frontline workers.
An official in the state health department had said they would prioritise municipal workers, police personnel and revenue officials associated in the Covid-19 containment, surveillance and associated activities for vaccination.
Municipal solid waste cleaners and civic engineers were among the frontline workers who were vaccinated at the 16 clinics of the CMC on Saturday. All those being vaccinated now are employees of the CMC.
A CMC official said they had planned to vaccinate 50 frontline workers and 40 health workers of the civic body, and 30 health workers from nursing homes and hospitals per day.
“But on Saturday very few frontline workers turned up. We are calling up those featuring on Monday’s list so that they come. Every day we will call frontline workers scheduled to take a dose the following day,” said the CMC official.
The health department has asked frontline workers to turn up at health clinics even if they do not receive any text message about vaccination. If a person’s name does not feature on a day’s list, he or she can still be vaccinated by exercising the “Add beneficiary” option in the CoWIN app, a digital platform created for Covid-19 vaccination.
Some private hospitals are waiting for lists from the health department to start vaccinating health workers not attached to their institutions and frontline workers.
“We have completed vaccinating our health workers. We are in a position to start large-scale vaccination of frontline workers and health workers from other institutions,” said an official of Belle Vue Clinic.
