KOLKATA: Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is ushering in a change in its vaccination strategy with effect from Monday (August 16) with the aim to give priority to the pending second doses of vaccine shots.
"We will be offering second doses of both Covishield and Covaxin from the urban primary health centres (UPHCs) and mega centres on Monday, Wednesday and Friday while first dose will be administered on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday," said Chief Municipal Officer of Health, KMC Subrata Roy Chowdhury.
According to sources in KMC's Health department, about 1 lakh second dose is presently pending among which around 75,000 is that of Covishield and 25000 is that of Covaxin.
"We have been finding that with no distinction in the schedule regarding the first and second doses, the people who are receiving the first doses in the health centres are much more than those receiving the second dose shots,"pointed out a senior KMC official.
Covishield is provided from 102 UPHCs and several mega centres of KMC.
Covaxin is administered from 42 UPHCs and some mega centres too.
Last week, due to shortage of supply from the Centre KMC had to stop administering Covishield from all its centres on Friday and Saturday.
This ultimately contributed to the backlog in 2nd doses.