Bengal receives second lot of vaccine doses -Bengal received 6.99 lakh doses of Covishield vaccine

Together with the 6.89 lakh doses that came last week, will be enough to vaccinate the 6 lakh-odd health workers in the state

A Covishield vial at a vaccination centre in Chetla.: Picture by Pradip Sanyal

Subhajoy Roy, Kinsuk Basu   |   TT   |   Calcutta   |    21.01.21 : Bengal received 6.99 lakh doses of Covishield vaccine on Wednesday, which, together with the 6.89 lakh doses that came last week, will be enough to vaccinate the 6 lakh-odd health workers in the state, officials said.

A state health department official said now that an adequate number of Covid-19 vaccine doses were available, they were targeting to administer the first dose to all health workers within one-and-a-half months.

Doses were administered at 31 sites across the state on Wednesday, though it had been decided initially that Covid vaccination would not be held on Wednesdays, which are reserved for routine immunisations.

“In all, 2,439 people were inoculated in Bengal on Wednesday. There was no report of any adverse event,” said Ajay Chakraborty, the director of state health services.

Till Tuesday, the doses were being administered at 207 sites across the state. On Wednesday, the health department approved around 200 more sites, taking the total count to 400.

The newly approved sites could start vaccinating health workers on Thursday or Friday, health department officials in Calcutta told their colleagues in the districts.

Officials in the health department said more sites needed to be set up for speedy immunisation, which has been made possible by the arrival of the second lot of Covishield doses.

The heads of the health department in several districts sent the names of proposed sites to the headquarters in the morning and most were approved by the afternoon.

All sites have been asked to administer the jabs five or six days a week, depending on the availability of doses. The government had earlier decided to conduct Covid vaccination four days a week.

“We received 6.99 lakh doses of Covishield on Wednesday. This entire lot is for Bengal. We had received 6.89 lakh doses last week, before the launch of the Covid-19 vaccination,” said Chakraborty, the director of health services.

“We now have an adequate number of vaccine doses to inoculate the health-care workers. If we are able to vaccinate 20,000 health-care workers each day across the state, it would take one month to inoculate 6 lakh health-care workers in our state,” he said.

Chakraborty felt that with holidays and weekly off-days in between, inoculation of health workers could be completed within a month and a half.

Another health department official said each district had been given the liberty to choose its vaccination days, though all have been asked to provide the shots more than four days a week.

“All districts have to increase the number of vaccination days in a week. They will have the liberty to choose the days taking into account local issues,” said the official.

The department has also set itself a target of administering the first dose of Covishield to 60 per cent of all health workers by January 29, said an official.

January 31 is the year’s first polio vaccination day. The health department has asked its staff to vaccinate as many health-care workers by then as possible.

Metro reported on Wednesday that the health department was planning to allow 20 more private hospitals in and around Calcutta to run Covid vaccination sites from early next week. The Calcutta Municipal Corporation, too, will open vaccination sites in 11 more ward health clinics from Monday.