KOLKATA: The entire consignment of 9.5 lakh doses of
Covid-19 vaccine will arrive in the city on Tuesday. A freighter will take off from Pune airport at 10.40am with 80 boxes of vaccines, each containing 12,000 doses in 1,200 vial. The flight is scheduled to touch down at Kolkata airport around 1.30pm, following which the consignment will be shuttled to two depots in the city.
The decision to charter a freighter to Kolkata was taken late on Monday evening to resolve the transportation issue in the absence of any passenger flight from Pune on Tuesday due to restrictions that limit operations between cities in Maharashtra and Bengal to three days a week. Flights operate from Pune, Mumbai and Nagpur on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
“We have just learnt that a SpiceJet freighter has been chartered to transport the vaccines allotted to Bengal on Tuesday. Once the consignment lands, it will be split and sent to two locations: the central vaccine depot at Hastings and the state depot in Bagbazar,” an airport official said.
Earlier in the day, at a meeting between PM Narendra Modi and state chief ministers, Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee had pointed out that the first phase of vaccination in the state for healthcare category includes 5.8 lakh government and private healthcare workers (doctors, nurses and hospital staff), 2.5 lakh police personnel and 1.3 lakh civic workers. She also requested that transport workers be identified as frontline workers so that they could be included in the initial phase of inoculation.
Till the freighter was requisitioned, there were plans to transport the vaccines in the cargo hold of passenger flights on Wednesday.
The vaccines that arrive in Kolkata will later be dispatched in freezer trucks to 941 cold chain points across the state. The state has already identified 44,000 vaccinators and over 4,000 vaccine administration session sites for the first phase of vaccination beginning January 16.
The health department has kept in readiness four GPS-enabled insulated vaccine vans to ferry the vials from the airport. Each van will carry around 3 lakh vaccine doses. These vans will later ferry the vaccines to districts in north Bengal. Districts in south Bengal will send their vans to the central store to collect their vaccines.
“The distribution plan, including transport, manpower and security arrangement, is ready so that we can start dispatching the vaccines as soon as they arrive. The sorting will be done at the Central Health and Family store at Bagbazar,” said a health department official.
The warehouse at Bagbazar has kept five walk-in coolers and four walkin freezers ready for storing the vaccine doses. Sources in the health department said the nine freezers together can store between about 30 lakh doses at a time. These freezers are being checked regularly to ensure that they are working properly.
At the airport, last-minute checks on logistics, including cold storage in the cargo hold and docking stations where freezer trucks that arrive early can plug in to maintain the temperature, were carried out on Monday evening. “We are absolutely ready to move the vaccines as soon as they arrive. We will ensure that the vaccines are loaded on to the freezer trucks within an hour of their arrival. We will actually try to accomplish the task within 30 minutes,” an airport official said.