The Calcutta Municipal Corporation has more than doubled the Covid-19 vaccination sites from Thursday, with 50 ward health clinics inoculating people above 60 and those between 45 and 59 with comorbidities.
A senior official of the civic body said that all the sites will have the option of spot-registration. One need not be a resident of the ward where the vaccination site has been opened to be able to receive a jab from there, said another official.
There were 25 sites of the CMC where Covid-19 vaccination was underway till Wednesday. The recipients will get free vaccines at the CMC clinics, said the official.
Firhad Hakim, the chairperson of CMC’s board of administrators, said that people only need to carry a photo ID card with them to the vaccination site. “People above 60 need to carry the photo ID card with them and come to any of the clinics from where vaccination against Covid-19 is being done. People between 45 and 59 must also carry the comorbidity certificate given by a doctor in the prescribed format,” said Hakim.
A CMC official said the person must also carry a mobile phone since a one time password (OTP) will go to registered mobile number, without which the registration on the CoWin portal cannot be completed.
Some photo ID cards that can be used for registering on the CoWin portal are Aadhaar, PAN, passport, driving license, electoral photo identity card, pension document with photograph.
A senior official of the state health department said people who will be 60 on January 1, 2022, will also be eligible to receive the vaccine. The cormorbidity certificate issued by a doctor registered with the Medical Council of India or the West Bengal Medical Council will be accepted, said another health department official.
The list of comorbidities that make a person between 45 and 59 eligible for the vaccine along with the prescribed format in which the doctor has to certify is available on mygov.in/covid-19. Scroll down on the website and open the ‘Guidance Note for Co-WIN 2.0’ document under the head ‘Information and Advisory’.
“We have started inoculation in 50 ward health clinics from Thursday. There will be on-spot registration facility in all these clinics for the benefit of people who are not tech-savvy and will not be able to register themselves through the CoWin portal. We will also inoculate those who have done the registration on the CoWin portal on their own and chosen our ward health clinic as the site,” said Subrata Roy Chowdhury, the chief municipal health officer of the CMC.
Metro reported on Thursday that several private hospitals in the city have also begun on-spot registration for recipients of the vaccine.
An official of the CMC said that each of the ward clinics has the capacity to inoculate 200 persons every day. The official said the number of general people taking the vaccine each day will rise once the administration of the second dose to healthcare workers and frontline workers is completed.
Some of the ward health clinics are already witnessing long queues of general people to get the jab. The vaccines at the CMC clinics are being administered free of cost.
However, the CMC officials warned that if there is a glitch in the CoWin portal at any time, the on-spot registration will suffer just like the vaccination of those who were already registered would stop. “We cannot take the name and details on a page and enter those details into the portal later on. That is not allowed,” said an official.
