kolkata less than one out of four persons who had been vaccinated on january 16 and 17 turned up in the last two days for the booster dose in the statethe first two days of vaccination after the rollout on january 16 saw close to 29817 recipients being inoculated in bengal only 7273 came to take the second jab in the past two days saturday and mondaysources pointed out two reasons for the poor turnout for second dose first of all most of the vaccination was done offline on the first few days of the rollout as cowin did not work so there was a delay in uploading data of recipients and hence they are yet to get messages from cowin for second dose also many healthworkers want to increase the gap between the first and a second dose for better immune response said a source in the state health departmenttimesviewvaccination managers should talk to vaccine recipients to understand the issues and then decide whether the two shots need to be spaced out more or the existing schedule is fine the vaccine recipients in this round are healthcare industry professionals and so should have more domain knowledge their opinion should be taken into accountsources hoped the turnout would improve once cowin starts sending messages for the second dosewe had called up several recipients for the second shot both on saturday and monday but most said they would prefer to take it on a later date for better immune response said a source at rg kar medical collegethe latest study in the uk on oxford astrazeneca vaccine has suggested better efficacy if the booster dose is given between six and twelve weeks covishield is the indian version of the same vaccine who has also supported the conclusion of this study we must understand that since its a race against the pandemic there is no luxury of experimenting various time durations between two doses the fact remains that fourweek time is also enough to administer the booster dose said senior clinical trial specialist santanu tripathi who is also the former head of clinical and experimental pharmacology at school of tropical medicine kolkatathe current guideline says the second dose should be given 28 days after the first dose most recent data by the oxford team shows better immune response with longer 12 weeks interval it is good to be flexible and reorient programs as and when new data is available said immunologist dipyaman ganguly scientist at institute of chemical biology kolkata