KOLKATA: Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will offer only a second dose of Covid vaccine on Friday (July 9) and Saturday (July 10). The decision comes in the wake of urgency to offer a second dose vaccine to over 14 lakh people whose doses have become due.
"The Centre's supply of vaccines is still irregular. So, we are compelled to formulate the vaccination strategy on a regular basis. There is a 12-16 week gap between two doses of vaccine. So, the administration of a second dose within this specific time frame is of utmost importance. So we have decided to provide only the second dose on Friday and Saturday," Atin Ghosh, Member Board of Administrators, in charge of KMC's Health department.
Presently, both first and second dose vaccines are being offered from the urban primary health centres. The second dose is given in the first half (10 am to 1 pm) and first dose in the second half (1pm to 4pm).
A senior official of the state Health department said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said time and again that the state is ready to procure vaccines directly from the manufacturing companies but the Centre's regulations do not permit any state to procure vaccines on its own. The allocation in the government health sector which is 75 per cent comes directly from the Centre and the rest 25 per cent is procured by the private health care sector. "We have created the infrastructure to inoculate 1 lakh people in the city but with the irregular supply, we are only able to vaccinate only 50000 people on an average," the official added.