Erratic supply of Covid vaccine doses has hobbled the inoculation drive in Calcutta with only about nine lakh of the targeted 60 lakh people in the city receiving two doses till date.

About 29 lakh people in the city have received at least one dose.

State health department and Calcutta Municipal Corporation officials said many more people would have been vaccinated by now had the supply from the Centre been more robust.

Public health experts said the vaccine hesitancy that was observed in the initial days of the drive has reduced to a great extent and people are eager to get a Covid jab.

According to the CMC, approximately 38.4 lakh people have received vaccines in Calcutta, of whom 9.05 lakh have got both doses. A state government official said the target was to vaccinate around 60 lakh people in and around the city.

The data on the CoWIN portal, managed by the ministry of health, confirm that the pace of vaccination in Calcutta has been erratic.

Less than 20,000 people had been vaccinated on July 1. On July 5, as fresh stocks arrived, the count went up to around 60,000. However, on July 12, it dropped below 15,000.

“Many among those vaccinated are floating populations who came from other states to get vaccinated,” said a CMC official. “So, the actual number of residents of the city who got vaccinated could be even less.”

According to the Centre’s data, Calcutta is behind Delhi and Mumbai in vaccination but has done better than Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

“We could have vaccinated many more people had the supply of doses from the Centre been steady. We have deployed adequate personnel and infrastructure. The state government on its part is

trying to procure more doses and we are expecting the drive to ramp up,” said Subrata Roy Chowdhury, the chief municipal health officer of the CMC.

There are 249 government and 84 private vaccination centres in Calcutta at the moment.

Apart from CMC and state-run hospitals, the vaccination programme has suffered at private centers, too. Many small nursing homes could not start vaccination because of lack of supply.

Public health experts have been repeatedly stressing that vaccination is the most preferred way to beat the pandemic.

“Vaccines have proven to have prevented infection by 75 to 80 per cent. The death rate (among the vaccinated population) is also extremely low. So, the production of vaccines should go up. The target should be to vaccinate 50 lakh people across the country every day,” Naresh Trehan, the chairman and managing director of Medanta, The Medcity, told The Telegraph.

At the Medanta hospital in Gurgaon, he said, there were around 600 Covid patients admitted at a time. None of them was fully vaccinated, he said.

Trehan, however, stressed the need to keep wearing double masks and avoiding crowded areas even after vaccination.

“The primary issue in scaling up vaccination is insufficient supply of doses from the Centre. Unless the vaccination drive is speeded up, we cannot prevent a fresh wave. Another lockdown will be harder for our economy,” said public health expert Abhijit Chowdhury.

He said vaccination and wearing masks were the two weapons to fight Covid.