Some private hospitals have kept their outreach vaccination camps on hold for this week because the health department will conduct inspections of the sites.

The Calcutta Municipal Corporation, on other hand, has set up a team of doctors to monitor its own Covid vaccination centres.

The state health department had issued a standard operating procedure (SOP) on Saturday that all outreach vaccination camps run by private hospitals have to adhere to.

The developments follow the arrest of Debanjan Deb, who impersonated as an IAS officer and organised fake vaccination camps.

“We have postponed all our outreach camps scheduled for this week. The department told us to inform them about outreach camps we are planning to organise at least five to seven days in advance. They will inspect the proposed camp site and give a written approval if they are satisfied,” said R. Venkatesh, the regional director of Narayana Health, whose flagship unit is the RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences.

Belle Vue Clinic, too, has kept on hold three outreach vaccination camps they were scheduled to begin this week. All the three camps, away from Calcutta, were meant to vaccinate 12,000 employees of a private organisation. The hospital had taken special permission from the health department to continue an outreach vaccination camp for the 3,000 delivery partners of a food delivery platform. “This camp began on Monday and will end on Wednesday,” said Pradip Tondon, the CEO of Belle Vue.

The CMC has formed a team of five doctors that will visit the outreach vaccination camps being organised in association with the civic body and the civic health clinics that are administering jabs.

Some of the things the team will monitor are:

⚫ Covid protocols are being maintained in the queues

⚫ Infrastructure and facility for post-vaccination care

⚫ If medicines required to treat any recipient showing any adverse reaction after jab are available in the centres

⚫ Vaccine dose accountability to see that vaccines are administered to those who queued up first and efforts made to prevent wastage.

The health department’s SOP said the CMC would have to “monitor all the vaccination sites under their administrative jurisdiction”.

The CMC has around 190 vaccination sites.