Healthcare workers associated with hospitals, who were willing to take the shot, have mostly received the first round of vaccine that was offered to frontliners on a priority basis. Even as the facility has been extended to the public, with senior citizens and those above 45 with comorbidities currently being inoculated, a significant section of doctors, who are private practitioners, has been left out of the fold.

Doctors who are neither senior citizens nor associated with big hospitals are worried about the process of registering for a Covid-19 vaccine.

Nearly all the doctors The Telegraph Salt Lake spoke to, who provide consultation in chambers across Salt Lake and New Town sitting in medicine shops, clinics or portions of houses, said that they had not been contacted to receive the vaccine. The Co-WIN portal, that is open to the general populace now, does not have the window for individual doctors to register themselves.

State health secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam admitted that some doctors were still left outside the vaccine fold. “Their names were supposed to have been entered. We had requested Medical Council of India and Indian Medical Association for names. We enrolled more than seven lakh healthcare workers, which included a lot of private practitioners. A few have been left out here and there. They will be included as healthcare workers. We are talking to the government of India. The doctors can walk in and it will be arranged. The local CMOH (chief medical officer health) and the district administration can coordinate,” Nigam told The Telegraph Salt Lake on Tuesday.

The doctors’ group Protect The Warriors, too, has appealed to the state health department to help reopen the registration of healthcare workers on the Co-WIN2 portal.

AL Block homeopath Tapas Gan (left) hears out a patient at a Covid-19 camp in Ultadanga organised by the Calcutta Municipal Corporation

Fending for themselves

Bimal Chandra Kundu, a general practitioner who sits in chambers in AD Block and CK Block, makes his patients sit more than six feet away and does not face him. The routine practice of checking a patient with a stethoscope is given a miss except in serious cases when he must check the patient physically.

No word has reached him about vaccination and he is worried. “Sitting like this is the least I can do to protect myself,” Kundu said, adding that he has stopped attending chambers that did not have enough space or ventilation.

The discussion among his colleagues these days mostly centres around how to get themselves vaccinated. “Most of my friends who are associated with hospitals have received the shot. We too are providing service to our patients but are not being provided the vaccine shield,” said Kundu.

Doctors in the smaller non-Covid facilities too are left out. Pratik Dasgupta, a cardiologist staying in Rosedale Garden, New Town, has to keep up with the ritual of bathing on reaching home, however long his hours may have been at Iris hospital in Gangulybagan. “We have an unoccupied servant’s quarter where I sanitise myself before entering our apartment. Often I don’t feel like it but I cannot put my family at risk.” At 48 and without comorbidities, Dasgupta has no chance to get a vaccine appointment with the rest of the general populace now.

nurse prepares a Covishield vaccine shot. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

Shield before the surge

Though initially he was hesitant, Dasgupta is now eager to get the vaccine. “We need the cover and fast. Cases are again on the rise. In January, out of 10 patients who came to me with fever and cough, one or two tested positive in the RT-PCR screening I sent them for. Now the figure has risen to four or five.” Though he was using PPE till January, he now sees patients in mask and gloves. “Being in PPE is too uncomfortable. One cannot even go to the toilet wearing one.”

But there is no scope for complacence, he reminds himself, adding that he had already got tested thrice though so far he has tested negative for Covid-19.

He now pins his hope on his hospital’s initiative. “Our medical superintendent has approached the health department, requesting permission to set up a vaccination centre at our hospital. But we hear only Covid hospitals are being allowed to vaccinate.”

Another cluster of doctors who are left out are last year’s MBBS pass-outs who are preparing for MD entrance. Sreya Chatterjee of Purbachal had given up her housestaffship at Nilratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital to focus on the April 18 examination. “Only those of us who are continuing as housestaff have got the vaccine,” said she, wondering when her turn would come.

CL Block resident Dipsha Chakraborty, a former student and housestaff of SSKM, too is preparing for the MD entrance. For the last two and half weeks, she has been trying to get herself and her 70-year-old general physician aunt enrolled. “My hospital said since I was not currently enrolled there, my name had not been enlisted for the vaccine and I'd need to contact local centres. The Bidhannagar Subdivisional Hospital, the vaccination centre closest to us, asked us to contact the office of the district chief medical officer of health (CMOH). But that is in Barasat. The CMOH staff refused to speak over phone and asked us to come. Travelling 25km without a guarantee of getting the vaccine that day is too much,” she said. Six members of her family, including herself, got infected with Covid-19 in August. Her aunt, who has resumed seeing patients from January, has managed to get a shot this week, as a senior citizen, but Dipsha is stuck. “My antibodies are unlikely to last. I too will join a hospital in a couple of months. I need the vaccine before that,” she said.

Those practising alternative medicine are completely in the dark about when they would qualify, or if at all. “Homeopathy doctor der ekta alada tokma lege jay,” rued Tapas Gan, whose chamber is in AL Block.

He has an extra reason at feeling disappointed at not getting registered as a frontline worker by the health department and getting a call-up. “I visited containment zones in the slums of Ultadanga, Chetla and Bowbazar with the civic medical team on invitation from the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, at the height of the coronavirus crisis in the middle of 2020, distributing Arsenicum album and Bryonia Alba to affected families. I did not even charge consultation fees,” he recalls.

He continues to see patients in his chamber as he did through last year. “Ei damadoler bajare amra etoi nogonyo, keu amader prayojon bodh koreni,” he says, adding that he has taken his own medicines as a prophylactic. “So far, it has kept Covid at bay for me.”

Bikash Das, who has a chamber in Purbachal, had tried to register on the CoWin App but could not do so as the app has a field that needs to be filled with the name of a hospital or a nursing home the medical practitioner is associated with.

Das said he had heard that the Indian Medical Association was drawing up a list of doctors enrolled with them but is unsure about the progress of the process.

“My registration is at least 25 years old and I have switched houses. I am now using a cellphone whereas the IMA database has the landline number of my old house. I don’t know how they will contact me, even if they try,” Kundu said.

Pratik Dasgupta ready in personal protective equipment to see patients

Bridge the gap

IMA state assistant secretary Anirban Dalui, who was also the coordinator of the state’s Covid protocol monitoring committee and was the link between IMA and the health department, said: “We have no data on how many doctors do private practice. About 10 per cent of them are also attached to hospitals and got the vaccine. We tried to reach out to the other private practitioners through social media, asking them to reach out to us. At the IMA, we had started registration for members and then extended the facility to non-members too. Associated doctors’ organisations like Protect the Warriors and Association of Physicians of India collected names too. Close to 7,000 doctors contacted us from across Bengal like this.”

A minimum of 5,000 to 7,000 doctors are left unvaccinated in Bengal, in his estimate. “I am certain that they did not miss out due to lack of awareness. They must have had misgivings and wanted to wait and watch. They must have thought that they could get the vaccine at any time. No one expected the Co-WIN portal to be closed for registration on January 29, soon after vaccination started on January 16. This sudden unannounced closure is what has caused them to be left out.”

IMA also organised eight special vaccination sessions at SSKM and Sambhunath Pandit Hospital for private practitioners, especially of Dum Dum, Salt Lake and Behala, whose names they had collected. But once the portal closed for registration in end-January, about 5,000 doctors still got left out from the list. “We are not accepting new names till we can arrange for the vaccination of those who are already enlisted with us,” Dalui said.

Though doctors are unable to register themselves anymore on the portal, unless they can do so as senior citizens, an official at the Bidhannagar Subdivisional Hospital confirmed that their registration as healthcare workers was still possible through an institutional log-in ID. “Doctors who need the vaccine should contact the district CMOH,” he said.