Vaccination chaos: Cachar administration shifts centre from Civil to Urban without informing beneficiaries

Many people have signed up for the vaccine using the Co-WIN Vaccinator app. However, not only in the Cachar district but across the state, there is a shortage of vaccines. Hence, not everyone is eligible right now to receive a jab. Especially for those who are 60 years of age or older, the app is setting individual dates for those applicants. Many people in their sixties have recently received a message saying that they’d have to go to the Civil Hospital on Friday morning to take their dose. But no staff or official at the Civil Hospital agreed to speak to them. Finally, after waiting in vain all day long, they returned home disappointed.

However, the health department said the incident was due to a minor misunderstanding. The vaccination drive was recently removed from the Civil Hospital and taken to the Urban Health Center on Trunk Road.

District Immunization Officer Dr. Sumana Naiding said that in a meeting chaired by the District Administration held on April 9, it was decided that to resume Covid treatment at the Civil Hospital, they would have to shift the vaccination process of the elderly to elsewhere.

She said, “As the number of infected people is increasing, we are going to restart Covid treatment at the Civil Hospital as well as the Silchar Medical College & Hospital. Meanwhile, the vaccination process is already underway where the elderly people are being given top priority. We don’t want the elderly people to get anywhere in the proximity of where Covid infected people will come to get treated, hence we’ve shifted the vaccination camp to the Urban Health centre. However, the people who registered through the app did not get the news and went to the Civil Hospital instead and gathered there.”

Many of those who went to the Civil Hospital on Friday morning said that they had not been informed by the hospital about this recent development. Manabendra Chakraborty of the Das Colony area said, “We registered through the app and were scheduled to be vaccinated today. We went there at 7 am and stood up in a queue to wait there till noon. No one from the hospital even agreed to speak to us, most of the staff and officials were not present that day. Suddenly after some time, someone came and said that there is no vaccine, so we would have to go back home. If they had informed us about this in advance, we aged people wouldn’t have to stand there all day in the scorching heat.”

Although, District Immunization Officer Sumana Naiding has denied that there was any shortage of vaccines. She said “There is a shortage of vaccines not only in the Cachar district but in the entire state, so we are not being able to give doses of vaccine to every applicant. Each centre is vaccinating 100 to 150 people a day. The rest are asked to go back home and are being called back later at a convenient date. The government has said that the supply of vaccines will increase after Bihu, and we hope that this problem will be resolved in the coming days.”

Now the question is, if there is a shortage of vaccines, then why are the elderly people being called in and lined up for hours? Even while taking the vaccine, they are at risk of getting infected on one hand, and on the other hand, the physical complications are likely to increase.

Reporting by Biswa Kalyan Purkayastha, English written by Sourav Das