The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has deputed four to six health workers in each ward to identify people who are still unvaccinated or are partially vaccinated.
During the visits, which started earlier this week, the health workers are providing slots to such people to take jabs at the nearest KMC-run vaccination centre.
Each health worker has been asked to cover 60 families every day, a senior KMC official said.
Civic officials had planned to complete the visits by September 11, but are likely to extend the deadline because of the huge area they have to cover, sources said.
“All wards have four to six health workers who have been tasked with visiting slums and semi-affluent areas,” said a senior KMC health department official, in-charge of one of the boroughs.
“The health workers have slips with them to assign a date and time to such people to get vaccinated at the nearest KMC-run vaccination centre. This is a priority for those whose second dose is due,” said the doctor.
The health workers will also counsel people who have not taken the first dose to get vaccinated at the earliest.
“The field workers are trained to counsel and motivate people to take vaccines. They have been doing similar work for years,” said a KMC doctor.
One of the duties of the health workers is to visit slums and motivate parents to bring their children to a health centre for immunisation against various diseases, he said.
As for the focus on slums and semi-affluent areas, a civic official said the majority of people from low-income backgrounds prefer taking vaccines for free at civic health centres or government hospitals.
“A good number of people from affluent neighbourhoods take vaccines at private hospitals. But the majority of the people in the low-income neighbourhoods take the jabs at our centres or government hospitals. So, we are focusing on semi-affluent or low-income neighbourhoods,” said the official.
Officials feel many people in these low-income neighbourhoods might have been demotivated seeing long queues outside civic vaccination centres. Officials feel a nudge from the health workers will motivate these people to take the shots.