Vaccination starts for poll officials with 4.7L target

Kolkata: Eleven school teachers, who will work as presiding officers during the state polls, turned up on Wednesday at a block primary health care centre in Budge Budge for Covid vaccination.
This is part of an ongoing effort by the Bengal government since this week to vaccinate all the 4.7 lakh poll officials, including the presiding officers, polling officers, the sector officials and other support staff, who will be deployed for the Bengal polls.
Government medical colleges in the city are vaccinating 250 to 400 polling officials per day. Vaccination sites in some private hospitals have also started immunising the polling officials. The 11 teachers of Deshbandhu Palli Sevasangha Santoshkumari Sikshaniketan, a government-sponsored school in Budge Budge, underwent an election duty training programme last Monday as they would be on poll duty as presiding officers.
“After the training programme, we were told that we would go through the inoculation. It was, however, not compulsory. In case anybody refused to take the vaccine or had allergic symptoms, the authorities noted down his or her name. We took the vaccine today and are feeling happy to take part in the process,” said Surajit Maji, a geography teacher.
“Our names were first enlisted, after which we waited for just about five to seven minutes and then we entered the vaccination room where our papers were rechecked. We were informed that we were getting the Covishield vaccine.,” said Samir Das, a science teacher.
In addition to this, there will be nearly one lakh cops— 80,000 state police and another 20,000 Kolkata Police — who also need to be vaccinated. The commission officials have already spoken to the central force’s nodal officer so that its all members will get their double dose of vaccination before coming to the state for the election duty. “The election commission will bear the cost of their treatment,” the official said.