At least one private hospital stopped Covid vaccination on Tuesday. Another is administering only second doses of Covishield and a third has stocks that will last barely a couple of days.

Covid vaccines have again become scarce at many private hospitals in Calcutta and several of them have stopped or restricted the vaccination drive. Most hospitals have Sputnik V and Covaxin doses but officials there said the maximum demand is for Covishield.

All these hospitals placed orders with the manufacturers through the CoWIN portal and made payments by Friday. But till Tuesday night, there was no word when fresh doses would come.

Last month, the state government had told private vaccination centres that it would help them procure Covishield and Covaxin doses. The private centres were provided with a link to place orders through the National Health Authority and told to pay the manufacturers directly.

However, in the last week of June, the state government had informed the private centres that the process was cancelled because of a new tax component that would be added from July.

The payments would be returned to the private vaccination centres and they were told to submit fresh demands through CoWIN.

Placing the order through the portal would help the Centre monitor the distribution system. But many private hospitals said such complications had delayed the procurement process and stocks were getting exhausted before the arrival of fresh doses.

Charnock Hospital stopped the vaccination drive on Tuesday as its stocks had exhausted.

“We were rationing Co-vaxin doses for the last few days. On Monday, we vaccinated only 20 persons,” said Ipsita Kundu, the CEO of Charnock Hospital. “The Covishield stocks had been exhausted more than a month back.”

The hospital has placed fresh orders for 6,000 doses of Covishield and around 1,000 doses of Covaxin. But there is no clarity yet on when they will come.

Peerless Hospital has not been administering the first dose of Covishield since Monday. “Only the second dose of Covishield is being administered. We have 1,800 doses and that will last for barely a week,” said Sudipta Mitra, the chief executive of Peerless Hospital.

The number of vaccinations has come down from around 600 every day to less than 400.

“We are administering a few doses of Sputnik V and Covaxin. Around 80 per cent of the people want Covishield,” he said.

The hospital has placed orders for 35,000 doses of Covishield and 7,000 doses of Covaxin.

The RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences has stocks of Covishield for barely two days.

“We have 1,000 doses left and every day around 500 people are getting vaccinated. We have placed orders through CoWIN for 35,000 doses of Covishield and made payments last Friday, but till now there is no response from the manufacturer,” said R. Venkatesh, director, eastern region, Narayana Health, which runs the RN Tagore hospital.

The AMRI Hospitals group has reduced vaccination at all three units and also at off-site camps.

“We have stocks for at most a week. The number of people being vaccinated daily at our three units has dropped from around 3,000 to 1,500. Off-site vaccinations have gone down from around 5,000 daily to around 2,000,” said Rupak Barua, group CEO, AMRI.

The group has placed demands for 1.5 lakh doses of Covishield and 30,000 doses of Covaxin.