75% queue up for jabs in three Kolkata hospitals on Covaxin rollout day – Times of India

KOLKATA: Covaxin rolled out in Bengal on Wednesday with senior health officials, including National Health Mission (NHM) director, Saumitra Mohan, director medical education (DME), Debasis Bhattacharyya and NHM project director, Smita Sanyal Sukla, taking the jab at IPGMER.
The first day of the rollout from three centres in Kolkata — RG Kar Medical College, IPGMER (SSKM) and Medical College Kolkata — saw 45 recipients being vaccinated against a target of 60.
The three centres had a target of at least 20 recipients each. While RG Kar Medical College vaccinated 32, IPGMER (SSKM) inoculated 13. Medical College Kolkata did not open a single vial as they did not get sufficient number of people to be vaccinated.
“Most of the recipients in our site on Wednesday were doctors. From Thursday, we are planning to offer the Covaxin option to those who come to take Covishield,” said an administrator at RG Kar Medical College.
While 436 recipients got the Covishield shot from four sites at IPGMER, only 13 healthcare workers took Covaxin from the lone session site. A few others who had come later were asked to report on Thursday as the authorities didn’t want to waste the other vial (containing 20 doses of the vaccine).
“As per protocols, a vial has to be discarded four hours since it is opened. So, we could vaccinate 13 people in the first four hours. Two more beneficiaries turned up later but we didn’t want to waste so many doses of the vaccine by opening a fresh vial and have asked them to come the next day,” said an official of SSKM Hospital. Sayantan Mazumdar, a junior doctor who took Covaxin at IPGMER believes that people’s apprehension about Covaxin will ease off soon.
Santanu Tripathi, an expert clinical pharmacologist and vaccinology advisor to Bengal government, said, “There is some reservation about its efficacy. But in the early phase of studies, its immunogenicity has been found to be adequately reassuring. Therefore it is unlikely to be not offering the desired protection.”
Sources at the three medical colleges said the decision of Covaxin rollout was taken on Tuesday morning, so they did not get enough time to mobilise the recipients.
“We could mobilise only seven persons overnight to take the Covaxin shot. A vial contains 20 doses. If we had opened it, 13 doses could have been wasted. We are trying to mobilise more people through the community medicine department,” said an official at Medical College Kolkata. Meanwhile on Wednesday morning, 44 boxes of Covaxin reached the Kolkata airport in an Air India flight from Hyderabad.