The outreach Covid vaccination programmes by private hospitals that had significantly reduced over the past two months or more have picked up again.
Abundant supply of doses, low demand for on-site vaccination and the state government’s requests to continue off-site inoculation drives so more people can be covered before the festival season are some of the factors behind hospitals gearing up the drive again.
Private hospitals were administering thousands of doses in their outreach camps, including at residential complexes and corporate offices.
But from end-June, the drives had reduced after the state health department imposed additional checks before granting permission for an outreach camp. The new SOP was issued after it came to light that Debanjan Deb had allegedly posed as an IAS officer posted as joint commissioner in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and organised several ‘vaccination camps’ without the health department’s approval.
Now, over the last few days, some private hospitals have increased their off-site jab camps.
RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences had very few outreach camps for more than two months.
“For the past one week, we have been holding outreach camps every day. On an average, 300 people are vaccinated at the camps held at residential complexes and corporate offices,” said R. Venkatesh, regional director, east, Narayana Health, of which the Mukundapur hospital is a flagship unit. “Many recipients have their second Covishield doses due. But the demand for the first dose has resumed, too.”
Woodlands Hospital during the peak of the outreach jab camps was vaccinating more than 3,000 people.
“In August, the demand had fallen to 350 to 400 per day. It has now picked up to over 650 every day,” said Rupali Basu, managing director and CEO, Woodlands. “The reason is we had agreements for both doses with corporates and second doses are being given now.”
AMRI Hospitals used to vaccinate 2,500-odd people at off-site camps in June. Since then, it had almost stalled. “Now, we are again vaccinating around 1,500 people every day at off-site camps, which is more than the number at our three hospitals,” said Rupak Barua, group CEO, AMRI. The three units are vaccinating less than 750 people every day.
A state government official said one of the reasons was the smoother process of issuing off-site camp permissions. “Initially, it was taking time to issue the permissions and many hospitals started losing interest. Now, the system has fallen into place and permissions are issued faster,” the official said.
The other factor was an abundance of doses with hospitals and few takers, he said.
“We keep urging the hospitals to continue the outreach camps to cover as many people as possible before the festive season,” he said.
