KOLKATA: Even as Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has received a portion of 4 lakh Covid vaccine doses from the state health department, the allocation is grossly inadequate for the civic body to clear the second dose backlog that continues to soar. The Covid vaccination clinics operated by KMC is facing a Herculean task with daily pendency for second dose going up by two-and-a-half times from 20,000-a-day a fortnight ago to 50,000 on Wednesday.
To tackle the situation, the civic health department has decided to only offer second doses at 30 clinics where the due date for the second jab has already passed for over 500 people at each centre.
Civic health department officials say the figure is set to get more skewed in the days ahead due to continued mismatch in demand and supply of vaccines across vaccine centres in the city.
“We needed to administer the second jab to over 50,000 people on Wednesday but given the allocation, we were able to vaccinate around 11,000. Thus, the pendency of 39,000 will remain. A further 15,000-odd who are due to get the second dose on Thursday will get added to this. These people have all completed 84 days since taking the first vaccine shot,” a KMC health official explained.
While the situation is still manageable now, officials say the pendency needs to be cleared before the numbers escalate. Around May, KMC had gradually increased the daily vaccination target from 10,000 a day to 15,000 and then 20,000. In June-end, it had administered the vaccine to 62,000 people on a single day, followed by 50,000 the following day.
“We need the kind of allocation that was done in the latter half of June to wipe out the pendency. At the time, there were days when a clinic would receive 500-600 doses in a day. Now, that has been reduced to 100 doses at 30-odd CVCs where pendency is over 500 and 50 doses in CVCs where pendency is below 300,” an official said.
Civic health officials posted at the CVCs say the situation is extremely embarrassing with senior citizens reaching the clinics only to learn there aren’t enough vaccines. “Since the supply isn’t enough, we are unable to even commit them to any date for the second dose. Quite justifiably, they are getting jittery since vaccination at private CVCs is also on the decline due to low stocks. The situation needs to be addressed quickly,” an official at a CVC said.
