The West Bengal government on Thursday directed officials to follow vaccination guidelines issued by the Central government with regards to students going abroad for study and sportspersons participating in the Tokyo Summer Olympics.
The Central government had on June 7 decided to reduce the second Covishield dose gap for students, sportspersons and professionals travelling abroad to four weeks from eight weeks.
The state issued a notification a day after the Association of Health Service Doctors wrote to the principal secretary of the Health and Family Welfare Department to implement the Central government’s standard operating procedure (SoP).
“You are well aware of the fact that in spite of the fact that Bengal has ample number of such prescribed beneficiaries, the Govt of WB did not notify anything in this regard, which is unnecessarily throwing the persons belonging to these two groups to utter anxiety and discontent. In this backdrop, we strongly urge upon your good office to take appropriate measures so as to make an urgent notification on guidelines for issuing Covid-19 certificates for our state,” read a letter written by Prof. Manas Gumta, General Secretary, AHSD, Bengal.
A day after the letter was sent, the state Health and Family Welfare department issued wrote to all the hospitals, civic bodies to implement the revised SoP.
As many as 5,274 new coronavirus cases were recorded, taking the total number to 14,48,104. Active Covid cases stood at 14,719 as 5,170 patients were discharged.