Health workers of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) are paying door-to-door visits, urging elderly residents and those between 45 and 59 with comorbidities to get vaccinated against Covid-19. The health workers are also booking time slots for those who are willing to take the jab in a CMC clinic.

The specific time slots are being given so that recipients do not have to wait for long in a queue. Covid-19 vaccination is being done at 61 ward health clinics of the CMC for free.

A large number of people are visiting the clinics without registering on the Co-Win platform. If several such people come at the same time, it will lead to long queues which the CMC wants to avoid, said officials.

A week into the door-to-door visits, the CMC is getting mixed response. “We want to prepare a list of 150 people every day. But we are achieving about half that number, because many are not cooperating,” said an official.

Some said they would like to get vaccinated at a hospital, others said they were unwilling to get vaccinated. A few want to wait and watch.

The vaccination of people above 59 and those between 45 and 59 with comorbidities started on March 1.

Metro accompanied a CMC team that visited households in Kasba last week. In one of the flats, an elderly woman said she and her husband would not get vaccinated. She did not cite any reason.

On an upper floor, an elderly couple heard out the team and said they would get vaccinated after the Assembly elections.

Each CMC clinic is vaccinating about 200 people on an average every day. Though the number of people who are booking slots during the door-to-door campaign is less than the target, the number of daily vaccination is not falling behind the target.

That is because many recipients are getting themselves registered at the spot.

“But we want to bring down the number of people opting for spot-registration. If we can give slots to recipients in advance, it will prevent crowding and help us manage the situation better,” an official said.

“The door-to-door visits will work like an awareness campaign on Covid-19 vaccination. Since the Covid-19 numbers are rising again in the city and elsewhere in the state, vaccination and adhering to Covid-appropriate behaviour are the only two ways to prevent the situation from worsening. If we are able to vaccinate many people, the virus will not be able to spread rapidly,” said a CMC doctor.

One CMC official said he had instructed teams in his borough to tell residents that the doses being administered at private hospitals were being sourced from the CMC’s storage facilities to drive home the point that the vaccines being used in private hospitals and CMC clinics were the same.

The CMC teams are also handing over a printed format in which a doctor has to certify whether someone between 45 and 59 has comorbidities. Only the doctor’s certificate in the prescribed format will be considered, said officials. The format can also be downloaded from mygov.in/covid-19/.

CMC sources said the health clinics would play a pivotal role in vaccinating the general population since they are spread across the city. The CMC has 144 health clinics, one in each ward. “Some localities may not have a hospital close to them, but there will be a CMC clinic where people can be vaccinated,” said the official.