A consignment of nearly 10 lakh doses of Covishield, a Covid-19 vaccine, reached Calcutta on Tuesday afternoon on a Spicejet flight, with 6.89 lakh doses earmarked for Bengal. The rest will be sent to the northeastern states.
The doses arrived in 83 special boxes from the Serum Institute of India in Pune, which is manufacturing the vaccine.
The doses meant to be distributed across Bengal have been stored in 57 boxes, kept in two walk-in coolers, at the Central Family Welfare Store in Bagbazar.
Over 900 cold chain points have been readied across Bengal for storing the doses. In Calcutta, the cold chain points at five government-run medical colleges, Beleghata ID Hospital and MR Bangur Hospital in Tollygunge will be used for the purpose, officials said.
Dry run bares connectivity glitches in several parts of Bengal Friday’s drive was done in three centres each in 23 districts of the state, each centre had 25 dummy candidates
In several parts of Bengal, the vaccination process was delayed during Friday’s dry run because of poor connectivity that snapped links with an app used to register a recipient.
Senior officials at Swasthya Bhavan who went through reports from 69 vaccination centres across the state said such snags were reported from parts of Sandeshkhali and Samserganj in North 24-Parganas, Gosaba and Basanti and parts of Sunderbans in South 24-Parganas and a few in Kalimpong and Dooars in north Bengal.
The state health department is talking to voluntary organisations to draw up a list of around 20,000 volunteers who will vaccinate around six lakh health-care workers in Bengal in the first phase of Covid vaccination.
Officials of the health department said they talked to representatives of several voluntary organisations on Monday seeking their support in providing volunteers. Such talks will continue over the next few days.
According to the plan, each vaccination facility will be run by a representative of the health department and four persons from an outside agency. Each facility will vaccinate 100 people a day. If the infrastructure permits, more than one vaccination facility can be set up in one compound.