Over 200 private medical practitioners were administered Covid-19 vaccine doses at a special session at SSKM Hospital on Wednesday.

This was the first time a vaccination session was held in the city for private practitioners, doctors not attached to any government or private hospital, nursing home or clinic.

Since the launch of the Covid-19 vaccination on January 16, doctors from private and government hospitals, nursing homes and clinics have been receiving Covid vaccine shots. Health workers associated with the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) are being inoculated against Covid at ward health clinics of the civic body.

But before Wednesday, no drive was undertaken for private medical practitioners.

“The Indian Medical Association (IMA) had requested the health department to include private practitioners in the list of healthcare workers to be vaccinated first. They listened to our request. Today, the department organised a session for private practitioners. We helped them in the drive,” said Santanu Sen, the secretary of the IMA’s Bengal branch.

“Another vaccination drive for private practitioners will be held at Sambhunath Pandit Hospital next Wednesday.”

A state government official involved in the supervision of the Covid-19 vaccination in the city said the government was mulling to open other channels to vaccinate private practitioners. “Wednesday’s session at SSKM was dedicated to private practitioners. We are working out a plan to vaccinate small numbers of private practitioners at some other vaccination sites every day,” said the official.

“A few private practitioners might have been vaccinated at one or two sites earlier, but not on the scale witnessed on Wednesday.”

An IMA official said they had prepared a list of 4,500 private practitioners across the state, 1,800 of them are from Calcutta, and sent it to the health department. “These were names that reached us. The actual number of private practitioners will be much more. Some of them filled in a form and emailed it to the department, many others used other channels to get themselves registered,” the official said.

The CMC had delivered a printed sheet with 24 columns at chambers of private practitioners in Calcutta. “The doctors have to fill in the columns and email a scanned copy of the document to an ID to get their names registered,” an official said.

The private hospitals that have been allowed to run vaccination sites on their campuses have been asked to administer the jabs to a certain number of health workers not attached to the respective hospitals.

“When vaccination of health workers attached to hospitals will be near completion, more and more private practitioners will be called,” said another state government official.

About 4,000 health workers were vaccinated in the city on Wednesday, said a health department official.

The jabs were administered from 43 sites in the city on Wednesday. The CMC sites did not run Covid vaccination during the day because Wednesdays are reserved for routine immunisations.