Kolkata: To reduce the burden on government establishments and cover the maximum number of people in a shorter period of time, the top private hospitals in the city have been asked to set up vaccination centres in their premises. During a meeting with the representatives of the private hospitals in the city, the health officials had discussed the plans as to how the top private hospitals can play an important role during the pandemic. The government will provide the private hospitals the doses of vaccines and syringes. The private establishments will have to provide entire logistic support. The programme has to be carried under the CSR activities at free of costs. If anyone develops any complications after receiving the shot at these centres, the private hospitals will have to treat the patients free of costs. Apart from their own staff members, these private hospitals will vaccinate other people as well. Each big private hospital has to take the responsibility of vaccinating the staff members of the small private hospitals in the region. As per norms, the hospitals will deploy 5 vaccinators for each unit. The vaccination programme will be carried out from 9 am till 7 pm everyday. The health workers will initially be vaccinated, followed by police, army personnel, civic bodies employees and patients with comorbidities. There are around 6,60,000 health workers in the state. The private hospitals will set up 3 rooms at the vaccination centre. The health workers will check the names of the people in one room and then they will be sent to the vaccination room. The third room will be served as a waiting room, where the people will have to stay after being vaccinated. The nursing staff members will mainly administer vaccines but there will be a doctor at each centre. Saumitra Mohan, Secretary of the health department who is in-charge of the National Health Mission and Dr Ajoy Chakraborty, Director, Health Services who attended the meeting approved the proposal for using private hospitals as vaccination centres for COVID-19. "Many of the private hospitals had earlier applied to serve as vaccination centres. There was a lack of clarity over how to work out the process. The State Health department was working out the modalities on how to include private hospitals in the vaccination network. As discussed, we will be responsible for developing the necessary infrastructure so that vaccines can be administered without any issues. The cost of developing the infrastructure, however, will be borne by us," Rupak Barua, president of Association of Hospitals of Eastern India.

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