Hundreds of people from Rajarhat, Salt Lake, Baguiati, Dum Dum and other places who had gone to two vaccination centres run by the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation on Friday did not get the Covid shot as neither had any doses.

Many who had gone to the Salt Lake sub-divisional hospital near City Centre, too, did not get the shot because they had run out of doses.

At all three centres, arguments among those who waited for hours to receive the shot and hospital authorities broke out because the officials could not say when they would receive a supply of vaccine doses.

The gates of the hospital opened around 10am and the authorities asked the people to wait till doses arrived.

Soham Chakraborty, who had gone to the vaccine centre with his mother, said he had queued up at 3.30am to ensure that she got the jab. After waiting for over eight hours, no hospital official was there to tell them when the process would start, he said. “There was a huge crowd and sometime after midday, we started looking for officials. Then someone came from inside the building and said there were no doses,” said Chakraborty.

The situation was similar at a Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation-run vaccine centre in Narayanpur.

An official of the civic body’s health department said they had no option but to keep operations suspended as both centres had not received their daily quota of vaccines. “We could not announce earlier that vaccination would be suspended as we did not get any information that we will not get any vaccines,” the official said.

Many had turned up at Bidhannagar Sub-Divisional Hospital as well.

Preyashi Sahu, who had gone with her parents for their first dose, said that they waited for hours but did not get the shots. They asked the officials what the matter was. “They told us that it will not be possible to administer vaccines today and asked us to leave,” she said.

An official of the hospital said that they could only administer a few second doses on Friday. “We waited to get the vaccine supply but when we did not, we put up a notice informing everyone that no first doses will be administered on Friday. However, by then a large crowd had gathered,” said the official.

Covid count

Bengal on Friday recorded 17,411 new infections, 96 deaths and 12,885 recoveries. The number of active cases has risen to 1.13 lakh.

Of the 89 deaths, 28 were reported from Calcutta and 20 from North 24-Parganas. While Calcutta recorded 3,924 new infections, North 24-Parganas reported 3,932.