This week’s Covid vaccination at Calcutta Municipal Corporation sites is set to begin on a high note on Monday but officials fear the pace could slow down from mid-week because of inadequate supply of doses.
“Our target is to vaccinate about 40,000 people from the 190 vaccination centres of the CMC,” a civic official said.
“There are enough doses to achieve the target but we are not sure how many people we will be able to vaccinate daily from Tuesday if fresh stocks do not arrive on time.”
Some private hospitals, which had kept their outreach vaccination on hold last week to comply with a new set of rules made by the state health department, are set to resume the drive this week.
“Based on the vaccine allotment schedule for Monday, all vaccination centres of the CMC together will be able to inoculate about 40,000 people through the day. We have the capacity to vaccinate a greater number of people if there are enough doses,” said a CMC doctor.
An official of the health department said the state had 10 lakh doses on Sunday morning. The stock would reduce by the evening as some centres in districts ran vaccination on Sunday. But after accounting for the reduction, there will be enough doses for Monday.
But the picture could be different from Tuesday.
Civic officials fear a repeat of last week when the CMC clinics could vaccinate only about 40 people each on Tuesday and Wednesday, compared to the usual 200 or more people.
That happened because stocks had dried up.
The health department is expecting about 13 lakh vaccine doses in four tranches by July 13. But the earliest tranche — of 3 to 4 lakh doses - will only arrive on Thursday, said Ashim Das Malakar, the state family welfare officer.
“More doses will arrive on July 10, 12 and 14,” he said.
The vaccine manufacturers, Das Malakar said, have indicated that another 45 lakh doses would come in the second half of July.
A senior doctor said lack of adequate doses meant frequent changes in vaccination numbers at CMC clinics and other centres. This is creating inconvenience for many, who are standing in a queue for hours only to be told that the clinic had run out of doses.
R. Venkatesh of the RN Tagore hospital said they would launch outreach vaccination for at least two companies this week.
“We had to keep these camps on hold because rules changed. State government officials visited the site for inspection and gave a written approval letter. We submitted this letter to the health department, who then created a new workplace vaccination site for each of these places,” said Venkatesh, the regional director of Naryana Health, which runs the RN Tagore hospital.
Earlier, the approval letter was not required and the physical inspection of the site was not done by the government.
Rupali Basu, the managing director of Woodlands Hospital, said they would conduct fresh outreach camps for several IT companies from this week. “The companies helped us get the approval letter…” she said.
