After administering the first and second doses on alternate days for a week or so, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has decided it would switch to administering both doses on all six days from next week.

Following acute vaccine scarcity as KMC ran out of Covishield, it announced last week that second doses will be administered on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at its 204 vaccination centres while the first dose will be given
on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

The impact of this shortage in Kolkata was severe since Covishield are administered and available more in numbers than Covaxin. However, no sooner than KMC switched to the alternate schedule than it realised there are fewer vaccine takers for the second dose, as per a KMC source who pointed out that queues for first doses on the contrary is much longer.

It was observed that the rush for getting the first dose was overwhelming at the KMC-run vaccine centres. This, however, was attributed to many taking their second doses from government and private hospitals when the KMC centres were undergoing vaccine crunch which also led to a substantial backlog in respect to second doses.

Many were seen queuing up outside SSKM hospital during this period. People desperately went looking for Covishield with some having already missed their dates for the second dose while others nearing it.

The KMC had also announced its ‘alternate days’ plan to avoid overcrowding outside the vaccination centres every time new stock arrived after a gap of some days said a KMC source explaining that from Monday onwards, the first doses will be given out between 10 am to 3 pm while the second doses are between 3 pm to 4 pm.

The time period for the first dose is longer since there are more people waiting to get the first dose, mostly in the age group of 18 to 44. People wanting to get their shots can book their slots through the KMC WhatsApp bot.

Meanwhile, fresh stocks of Covishield and Covaxin have arrived in the city. About 61 boxes of vaccine came from Pune on an Air Asia flight while three boxes arrived from Hyderabad on an IndiGo flight which have been kept at the Baghbazar vaccine storage