The Calcutta Municipal Corporation is vaccinating around 30,000 people a day but nearly 25 per cent of them are from outside the Calcutta municipal area, officials said.
This highlights the fact that if vaccines have been scarce in Calcutta, they have been scarcer outside the city’s boundary.
The civic body has asked the state health department to allot more doses to its Covid vaccination centres because they are not only vaccinating Calcuttans but also a large number of people from districts.
“If the vaccination of the entire population of Calcutta is to be expedited, more doses are required for the city,” a civic official said.
“Over the past 10 days or so, thanks to shortage of doses, we have not been able to vaccinate more than 30,000 people a day on average. We have found that about 25 to 30 per cent of the people who are getting vaccinated at our clinics are from Sonarpur, Baruipur, Bidhannagar, Barasat and other places in adjoining districts,” a senior doctor at the CMC said.
“We have requested the health department to allot us more doses.”
The Telegraph reported on Friday that erratic supply of Covid vaccines had hobbled the inoculation drive in Calcutta. Only about nine lakh of the targeted 60 lakh people in the city have received two doses till date.
According to the CoWIN portal, where all Covid vaccinations are registered, over 39 lakh doses have been administered in Calcutta till 8pm on Friday. The figure includes the doses administered from government as well as private centres but the majority of them were given from CMC clinics.
“More than a quarter of the people getting the shot at CMC clinics are not residents of the city. While allocating doses to us, one needs to keep in mind that we are inoculating a sizeable number of people from districts daily,” a CMC official said.
Several households in Calcutta have domestic workers who come from adjoining districts such as North and South 24-Parganas. Also, a large number of people with blue-collar or white-collar jobs in Calcutta are from outside the city.
Many of these people have taken their jabs in Calcutta as the vaccination infrastructure in the places they are from is not as robust as it is in the city. The CMC runs as many as 190 Covid vaccination centres.
“Our domestic help comes from Lakshmikantapur in South 24-Parganas. She took both her jabs from a CMC centre. It was easier for her to take the jabs here because there are many centres in Calcutta. In Lakshmikantapur there are only a handful,” said a Gariahat resident.
Public health expert Abhijit Chowdhury told The Telegraph that vaccination of those who come to work in Calcutta is as important as vaccinating those who stay in the city.
“Huge numbers of people come to work in Calcutta from neighbouring districts. If they are not fully vaccinated, they could become carriers of the virus and spread it to others. These people can also take back the infection to their places of residence and become spreaders of the disease there. It is absolutely necessary to vaccinate them,” said Chowdhury, a member of the Covid task force of the state government.
Civic doctors said the CMC had to discontinue bookings at its clinics through WhatsApp chatbot because many of the recipients who booked their slots were from outside the Calcutta municipal area, a trend that many ward coordinators had objected to.
“The ward coordinators complained that many people in their wards had to stand in queues while people from elsewhere took the jabs after booking slots through the chatbot,” said a CMC doctor.
