KOLKATA: With less than 36 hours to go for the new vaccination timetable to take off, the health department at Kolkata Municipal Corporation are faced with a dilemma — should they continue to administer the jabs at the current pace or should they apply brakes just a bit to build up a buffer? While the former will mean less pendency, the latter will ensure the inoculation drive does not face uncertainty and continues uninterrupted irrespective of constraints in supply and allocation.
According to the new timetable, second doses will be administered on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and first doses on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
The civic brass is yet to take a call particularly in case of Covishield vaccines due to its irregular supply and a rise in second dose pendency. At present, KMC is administering around 25,000-30,000 Covishield jabs daily to both first and second dose recipients. Going forward, the civic health department can either continue to administer 25,000 doses to either first dose or second dose recipients daily, depending on the day of the week. Or KMC could administer around 15,000 jabs a day to first and second dose recipients.
“Till now, we have been inoculating around 1.5 lakh people a week, or 25,000 in a day. Of this, around 15,000 were second dose and 10,000 first dose recipients. We can continue to give 15,000 shots to second dose recipients or 45,000-50,000 shots a week on the three days allocated to second dose recipients and a similar number of doses to first dose recipients on other three days. This will enable us to build a buffer of 50,000 doses in a week. But that will also mean an increase in the second dose pendency rate. Alternatively, we can continue at the current pace and administer 25,000 doses daily. If we do this, there will be no buffer stock and uncertainties about the following day's vaccination will remain,” a health official explained.
Another health official made it clear that KMC was geared to vaccinate as many people as possible if it received supplies. In June, there were days when the civic body had inoculated 60,000 people. This was possible because at the time, a bulk of the vaccines reaching the state were being allocated to KMC.
The situation has, however, changed with a bulk of the vaccines now being allocated to the districts to step up the inoculation drive there. In Kolkata, 51.4 lakh doses have been administered, of which 37.8 lakh are dose one and 13.6 lakh are second dose.
