'Bengal ranks 2nd among states for 2nd jab to more people'

KOLKATA: Bengal ranks second in the country after Andhra Pradesh in terms of inoculating more number of beneficiaries with the second dose of Covid vaccine, said a senior Health department official on Monday. Bengal has so far conducted vaccinations of around 1.21 crore people, which is higher than Andhra Pradesh's figure of around 74 lakh.

Quoting a government data, the official said the total number of vaccinations in Bengal is higher than that of Andhra Pradesh. The number would have been much higher if the Centre could ensure a steady supply of vaccination to the state, officials added.

The data states around 88.25 lakh people in Bengal have received the first dose of vaccine whereas around 31.37 lakh people have got their second dose. The Health department vaccinated around 1.21 crore people till Monday. Till Sunday night, it had received a total of 1.23 crore doses. The number of doses further increased on Monday as the state received around 7.45 lakh additional doses of Covid vaccine.

The consignments came from Serum Institute of Pune and they were taken to the Central medical store at Bagbazar. It was learnt that out of total 7.45 lakh doses, around 3.5 lakh doses have been procured by the state government while the rest were supplied free-of-cost.

A total of 4.5 lakh doses have been bought and will be administered to the people in the age group of 18-45 years.

"Since our wastage factor is negative for efficient vaccine administration in the field level, we could save about 3.5 lakh doses and thus the stock stood at 6.5 lakh doses as on Sunday. The figure now goes up to 14 lakh on Monday after the new consignments arrived," a senior health department official said. "There has been a shortage of vaccine doses for a while and for that we have stressed on the second dose only to complete their vaccination cycle. As of now we are going to provide only the second doses to the people who are due to receive the same and the first dose is restricted to the health care and frontline workers only. The vaccination process will also begin for people aged between 18 and 45 years as we have managed to procure around 4.5 lakh doses," the official further added.

Around 1,31,975 people were vaccinated across the state on Monday. Around 7,141 people received the first dose while 1,13,586 received the second dose on Monday.