Bengal receives 400,000 Covid jab doses; not enough, say officials

Officials said the state has the capacity to administer around 500,000-600,000 vaccines per day, which can be stretched up to 700,000-800,000 doses per day, subject to availability

The West Bengal government, reeling under an acute shortage of vaccines, received around 400,000 doses from the centre on Wednesday even as health officials said that it was not enough to sustain the pace.

Representational image. (REUTERS)

The state government had to cut down on first doses of Covid-19 vaccines because of the shortage.

“We received around 405,000 doses on Wednesday. Another 400,000 doses are expected by this weekend. The quantity is not enough to meet our requirement of 300,000 doses per day,” said a senior official of the state health department.

Officials said the state has the capacity to administer around 500,000-600,000 vaccines per day, which can be stretched up to 700,000-800,000 doses per day, subject to availability.

The district administrations, civic bodies and state-run hospitals were directed to keep aside at least 50% of the available doses to cope with the shortage and the growing number of persons whose second dose was due.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday lashed out at the Centre, alleging that the state was being deprived of vaccines after Bharatiya Janata Party president JP Nadda attacked the Trinamool Congress-led government, alleging that Covid-19 vaccination numbers were the lowest in the state and fake inoculation camps were being organised in the state.

“Uttar Pradesh received around 35,000,000 doses, Maharashtra received more than 30,000,000 doses. Even smaller states received more doses than West Bengal. I don’t have any problem with that. But why is Bengal being deprived? We had demanded around 30,000,000 vaccines from the Centre. They try to malign Bengal,” said Banerjee, while speaking to reporters.

Data available with the state government revealed that as on June 29, at least 670,000 people are due for the second dose of Covishield vaccine while another 160,000 were due for the Covaxin vaccine. The total second dose due up to July 31 is around 3,790,000.

The maximum overdue number of second doses was reported from Kolkata. While the overdue number of doses for Covishield in the city was 58,428 on Tuesday, for Covaxin it was 25,021.

“Till June 29, Bengal had received around 19,900,000 doses from the Centre, of which 19,800,000 were used. There was no wastage and Bengal saved around 500,000 doses. Till Wednesday, around 21,800,000 doses were administered in the state,” said a senior health department official.