Many Covid vaccination centres of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation did not put up any notice informing people about the changed timings that came into effect on Monday.
Many people whose second dose had become due arrived at some of the centres early, only to learn that the shot would be delivered after 3pm.
The civic body has changed its vaccination schedule thrice in the past week. Till Saturday, it had reserved separate days for the first and the second dose.
From Monday, the CMC centres are administering doses every day, except Sunday, but in separate time slots. The first dose is being administered from 10am to 3pm and the second between 3pm and 4pm.
Sixty-year-old Amiya Kumar Nayak arrived at the primary health centre of ward 90, in the compound of Rabindra Sarobar, at 5am on Monday for the second dose of Covaxin.
“I came here early thinking I would be among the first few recipients. When the civic employees arrived around 10am, they told me second doses would be given only after the first doses were administered. There was no notice anywhere regarding the changed timings,” said Nayak, a resident of Balarampur in South 24-Parganas, who kept waiting under the sun.
The notices pasted on the walls of the health centre were about the old schedule.
The scene was identical outside the ward 69 primary health centre on Ballygunge Circular Road. There was no notice announcing the new schedule. A notice mentioning last week’s schedule was still pasted on the walls around noon.
Kanai Saha, 54, was waiting outside the centre for his second dose.
“When I arrived in the morning, those at the gate told me that the tokens for the second dose would be given in the afternoon. So I went back. When I returned to the centre around 12.15pm, I was told that all 40 coupons for the second dose had been exhausted,” Saha said.
“There was no clear instruction on how we would get the tokens. Some people told me the CMC staff would distribute tokens for Tuesday after 4pm on Monday. But nothing is written anywhere. The CMC employee at the gate is not even talking properly,” he said.
Asked about the lack of notices at vaccination centres on the revised schedule, an official at the CMC headquarters said: “We have asked the health centres to inform people about the new schedule.”
Civic doctors supervising vaccination said around two-thirds of the available doses were given to first dose recipients and the remaining to second dose recipients.
The primary health centre in ward 82 in Chetla, which has been among the most visited, administered 484 doses on Monday. “Two-thirds of the recipients had come for the first dose,” an official said.
Most other primary health centres were given 150 doses. At almost all centres, over 100 doses were administered to first dose recipients.
“We administered the first and second doses as and when people came and did not always follow the schedule. If some people came in the morning to take the second dose, we did not make them wait till 3pm,” said a CMC doctor.
Civic doctors are also concerned about how they will administer vaccines to children under the universal immunisation programme on Wednesday. Civic health clinics conduct routine immunisation of children up to 5 years on Wednesdays.
