The state health department has asked all districts to select health service workers “randomly” through an available database for vaccination, the move reportedly coming as a bid to avoid jabs for “ineligible” candidates.

Officials said the government had prepared a list of beneficiaries for vaccination “manually” for the first day and they suspected it was the reason for the inclusion of unwanted candidates by technicians handling the database.

“In a video conference on Saturday night in the presence of top health officials, it was conveyed to all concerned that beneficiaries were to be selected randomly using the database. We think it will minimise the chance of inviting ineligible candidates,” said a senior official in the state health department.

“If the random selection is done through a computerised database, the software will automatically take names from the system. The officials were asked only to put the categories of people such as ASHA workers, doctors, nurses when asking the software to prepare the random list,” the official added.

A section of health officials in the district, however, said there would be major problems if the software — CoWin — failed.

“We have observed the CoWin software became defunct on Saturday and if it happens again, the random selection process will be very tough. However, we will do it according to directions,” said a health official in Birbhum.

State officials said manual selection would be allowed only when the software failed.

On the other hand, the health department reportedly asked up to 150 health workers to report at the vaccination camp instead of the actual target of 100 following a poor show in different districts on Saturday.

The turnout was attributed to widespread apprehension about possible side effects.

“Many are skipping vaccination amid the fear of adverse side effects, so we asked the districts to summon 150 health workers a day. It will help reach the target of 100 even if 50 persons don’t come. The officials have been asked to call 120 health workers at the centers where the attendance was pretty good on the first day,” said an official.

Amid stray reports of illness of some recipients of the Covid, nodal authorities have begun scanning the physical condition of health workers who received the jab. From Sunday morning, officials began calling the recipients over the phone to know if they have felt any sort of uneasiness in the past 12 hours.

Additional reporting by Subhasish Chaudhuri