Poor availability of Covid-19 vaccine cripples vaccination campaign in states

From Uttar Pradesh in north to Tamil Nadu and Kerala in south, from Gujarat and Maharashtra in west to Assam and West Bengal in east, it’s the same story

The critical shortage of the Covid-19 vaccine has crippled the ongoing inoculation drive in several states, which stopped the vaccination campaign in many centres over the last few days.

From Uttar Pradesh in the north to Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the south, from Gujarat and Maharashtra in the west to Assam and West Bengal in the east, it’s the same story of non-availability of Covishield and Covaxin as the people’s wait for the vaccine grew longer.

For instance, the vaccination drive has come to a halt in Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu since Monday.

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The southern state received about 1.58 crore doses and almost all of them had been administered forcing the government to suspend the ongoing drive temporarily in most parts of the state.

Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian told DH that the state had no option but to close the vaccination centres till it got fresh supplies from the Centre.

Lack of steady supply impacts the vaccination drive in Kerala too with many facing the risk of missing the second dose. Some people travel to other districts in search of the vaccine.

Up north in Uttar Pradesh, the vaccination was halted in several centres in Prayagraj and Gautam Buddha Nagar districts. Officials said it would be near impossible to achieve the target of vaccinating ten lakh persons daily and inoculating every 18 plus by December 2021.

The first five days of July saw an average of 42.13 lakh daily vaccination all over the country, which is more than 20 lakh short of the doses being administered in the last week of June after the Narendra Modi government brought in a regime in which the Centre purchased 75% of the shots and distributed them to the states.

The Centre earmarked 12 crore doses for July, which may turn out to be inadequate, given the requirements from the states.

Asked about the shortage, Lav Agarwal, a joint secretary in the Union Health Ministry on Tuesday said, “We are not running a daily sprint, but a marathon. It's not appropriate to analyse the data daily.”

In the east, Assam failed to meet its target to vaccinate at least 3 lakh people daily between June 21-30 due to the shortage.

"We have created facilities to administer 3 lakh doses daily and people are willing, but we are unable to meet the demand as we are short of supplies," Assam health minister Keshav Mahanta said in Guwahati on Tuesday.

It’s a similar story in other northeastern states that are witnessing a rise in the Covid-19 cases.

In neighbouring West Bengal, the deficiency has forced the administration to direct the government hospitals to reserve 50% vaccines for the second dose. Health Department sources said that “the state is only left with about 60,000 doses.”

On the other side of the country, Gujarat experienced a vaccine shortage for quite some time. The state had extended the deadline for mandatory vaccination of employees at factories, shops and commercial establishments from June 30 to July 10 after it received representations on vaccine shortage from trade and industry bodies. For the past one week, there have been reports on vaccine shortages across the state.

In Maharashtra, district collectorates and municipal corporations now plan the vaccination daily. “It is a difficult task to spread it out in localities and categories,” an official said, adding that people were agitated and the government/civic staff had to face the people's ire.

There is however no complaints of vaccine shortage in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

(With inputs from Arjun Raghunath, ETB Sivapriyan, Mrityunjay Bose, Satish Jha, Sanjay Pandey, Soumya Das, Sumir Karmakar, Zulfikar Majid)