KOLKATA: Bengal is slated to cross the 2-crore vaccination mark over the next two days.
This means, roughly one in five Bengal residents would have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine by then.
On Tuesday, at least 2.9 lakh people received their shots from 2,383 sites, taking the total count in the state to over 1.9 crore so far.
But health officials said the state still could not scale up the campaign to the full capacity due to supply constraints.
As a result, the state is yet to start universal vaccination for all above 18 years, restricting the drive to priority groups.
Bengal had a stock of about 14 lakh doses on Tuesday.
Now, around 3 lakh people were being vaccinated a day including at private vaccination centres, and the figure was below the state’s capacity, an official said.
Vaccination in many teaching hospitals has been reduced to one-third the capacity.
“We get queries about the 18-44 age group but since we can vaccinate only priority groups, our number is restricted to about one-third of our capacity,” said a vaccination coordinator at a government facility.
Before the state was supposed to launch its drive to inoculate all above 18 from Monday, it received 13 lakh doses of vaccines in three consignments.
On Tuesday, it got 38,690 doses of Covaxin.
“We should get another 10 lakh doses by June-end.
The supply is escalated but it is not enough for our full capacity,” said Ashim Das Malakar, state family welfare officer.
Private hospital units are expanding their drive and inoculating 500 to 6,000 people a day.
“Our Kishore Bharati centre is giving 4,000 doses a day,” said Alok Roy, chairman of Medica.
AMRI Hospitals, which has started venturing into districts, is vaccinating about 3,500 people a day.
“We need to pull in our resources to inoculate more residents,” said Rupak Barua group CEO AMRI Hospitals.
“With 12,000 doses, we are sticking to our hospital site for now,” ,” said Peerless CEO Sudipta Mitra.