The state health department on Wednesday requested several private hospitals to create vaccination sites on their campuses.
The interested hospitals will have to send emails to the state health department by Thursday, following which government teams will conduct inspections to find out whether the campuses have the required infrastructure to run Covid-19 vaccination sites, officials said.
The hospitals have been told that the government will only provide vaccine doses and syringes and they have to deploy the necessary human resources such as vaccinators and support staff.
“A private hospital that will be selected to set up a vaccination site has to administer the doses to its healthcare workers as well as to healthcare workers of other private hospitals or nursing homes in their vicinity. I think most private hospitals will be keen to create vaccination sites on their campuses,” said Rupak Barua, the president of the Association of Hospitals of Eastern India and CEO of the AMRI group of hospitals.
Officials of AMRI, Peerless Hospital, Woodlands Hospital and Belle Vue Clinic said on Wednesday they were keen to run vaccination sites on their premises.
The Covid-19 Vaccines Operational Guidelines, issued by the Centre, state that each vaccination team will have five members. Each vaccination site will have three rooms.
The recipient’s identity will be checked at the gate. On entering the first room, the recipient’s details will be matched with the ones on the Co-Win, a digital platform created by the Centre for Covid-19 vaccination across the country.
The jabs will be administered in the second room, while in the third, the recipients have to wait for 30 minutes post-vaccination under the watch of the support staff.
“The private hospitals have to provide the full human resources required to run a vaccination site,” said Pradip Tondon, the chief executive officer of Belle Vue Clinic.
Barua said Covid vaccination at private hospitals would not start on Saturday as selection of sites will take some time. “It may begin next week,” said Barua.
Officials of private hospitals who attended Wednesday’s meeting with the health department said the vaccination sites on their premises would not be folded up after all health-care workers were vaccinated. The process will continue even when vaccination of the “general population” begins.
However, the hospitals have been allowed to opt out at a later stage, Barua said.
According to the Centre’s guidelines, health-care workers will be vaccinated first, followed by frontline workers. Next in line are people above 50, to be followed by those below 50 suffering from comorbidities.
The remaining population will only be vaccinated after these groups get their jabs.
The health department on Thursday asked the Calcutta Municipal Corporation to start vaccination from some of its clinics on Saturday. The clinics that have been chosen for Covid-19 vaccination are in wards 11 (Hatibagan), 31 (near Ultadanga), 46 (Free School Street), 82 (Chetla) and 111 (near Garia).
Sources said talks were on to open vaccination sites at more ward health clinics.
“It has been decided that healthcare workers of the CMC will be vaccinated in these clinics. A list of over 5,000 health-care workers of the CMC has been prepared for Covid-19 vaccination. They include doctors, nurses, lab technicians and ambulance drivers,” said a CMC official.
