A family waited for the Covid shot outside Bidhannagar Sub-divisional Hospital for more than 11 hours on Wednesday only to be told there were no doses left for them.

At least 400 men and women who had queued up outside the Salt Lake hospital during the day for their second Covid shot were turned away as the centre had run out of doses.

Many of those in the queue had turned up as early as 3am and were told around noon to go home.

Lake Town resident Tapan Das said he and several of his neighbours had queued up at 3am. “We had learnt that the centre was administering second doses. However, in the afternoon, hospital employees stepped out and told us they had run out of doses,” he said.

Rajkumar Yadav, a Rajarhat resident, said he had joined the queue around 4.30am. Past 3.30pm, he was told he would not get the shot. “We waited for more than 11 hours and were told that there were no vaccines left and to try again later,” he said.

Yadav, a driver by profession, said he wanted to take the shot at a government centre with his family of five because he could not afford to take it at a private facility.

A hospital official said: “We had received around 100 doses of Covaxin and Covishield each on Wednesday. But over 500 people had queued up.”

After learning that they would not be inoculated, the people in the queue started protesting.

Many tried to enter the hospital by opening the collapsible gate, which had been locked.

“The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation has decided to administer only second doses of Covaxin and Covishield for now to ensure that no one misses out on the second jab,” said a senior official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation's health department on Wednesday. “No second dose recipient will be turned away,” he said.

Officials of the civic body’s health department said they had no option but to turn people away if doses got exhausted.