KOLKATA: Bengal on Monday received 24,17,850 doses of Covishield, the largest ever consignment to arrive on a particular day. The state now has a reasonably good stock and health officials are hopeful about keeping up the vaccination momentum. Officials said they will target between five to six lakh doses daily. On Monday, nearly seven lakh doses were administered across the state till last reports came in.
The 24 lakh plus-doses on Monday arrived in three shipments. All the vials have been stored in the state’s central family welfare store at Bagbazar. Sending of the vials to district vaccine stores will begin on Tuesday. Sources at the Bagbazar depot said that North 24 Parganas and Kolkata will get the biggest shares with 3 lakh and 2.2 lakh doses respectively.
The state is expected to get about 1.3 crore doses in September. This was the second lot while the first shipment for the month had arrived on September 4 when the state got 5.1 lakh doses. Depending on the present stock, health officials said they could conduct an impulse vaccination drive on any of these days that would see 10 lakh and above doses being administered across Bengal.
“We are yet to finalize the decision on that. Meanwhile, we are stressing for a regular but sustainable range of 5-6 lakh doses daily,” said state family welfare official, Ashim Das Malakar.
Till Monday 4.4 crore plus doses had been administered in Bengal, of which 3.15 crore are first shots while the rest are second doses. For the last few days, close to 4 lakh doses have been administered daily on an average. “We can hike the number of sites close to 5,000 again like we did last Tuesday and target 10 lakh plus doses any day,” said a health department official.
Covishield second-dose norm eased
People from India, travelling abroad for medical treatment, or foreign nationals who need to return to their own countries can now get the second shot of Covishield before the mandatory 84-day gap. They will have to provide visa, confirmed tickets and documents to support such travel to take the second jab before 84 days. The state health department circulated this on Monday.
