Maha sees vaccine shortage, centres shut

Amid shortage of Covid vaccines, scores of vaccination centres were shut across Maharashtra on Friday, leading to panic among citizens

Amid shortage of Covid vaccines, scores of vaccination centres were shut across Maharashtra on Friday, leading to panic among citizens. A day after the state-Centre spat over supply, the state got 459,310 more doses on Friday, which are expected to last for three more days. Considering the time required for the transportation of the new stock, many centres are expected to face the problem on Saturday.

HT Image

Friday’s stock has brought the total number of doses received by the state to 11.08 million. The state vaccinated 267,687 beneficiaries till 7pm on Friday, against the daily average of 350,000-400,000, taking the number of inoculated beneficiaries to 8,698,426 with 9,628,138 doses. Considering the wastage, the state has about 1,150,000 doses left for vaccination, said state health officials. The state had inoculated 479,215 citizens on April 5, which dropped to 354,101 on April 8 and 267,687 on April 9. The number of centres was 4,938 on Friday, against 3,647 on Thursday.

“Many centres operated for the first few hours till the stock lasted. The stock received from the Centre is being transported to the respective districts and may take a day. This will result in shortage at some centres even on Saturday and Sunday,” said an official from the health department.

The official said the state was expecting 1.56million more doses to be delivered in the next few days. “Considering the state’s wastage rate, which is around 3%, around 300,000 doses have been wasted, leaving around 1,150,000 doses available for vaccination. We fear that even with the promised stock by the Centre, we would not be able to maintain our targeted pace of inoculating more than 400,000 people a day. After vaccinating more than 400,000 beneficiaries early this week, our rate has dropped owing to the shortage,” said the official.

State health minister Rajesh Tope said the promised stock of the jab was not sufficient. “We are targeting vaccination of more than 600,000 beneficiaries a day, for which a supply of 4 million doses a week is necessary.” In Beed, a centre at a rural hospital in Ambejogai was shut down after inoculating 100 beneficiaries. Centres in Panvel in Navi Mumbai ran out of stock resulting in closure of centres after inoculating 4,000 beneficiaries against the daily average of more than 8,000 people. The number of beneficiaries in Chandrapur fell to 567 (till 7pm) on Friday, against 5,117 on Thursday and 8,467 a day before. In Sangli, only 716 beneficiaries were inoculated (till 7pm), against 4,495 on Thursday and 12,422 on Wednesday. In Satara, 2,160 people were inoculated against its daily capacity of more than 22,000. In Thane, 22,973 were inoculated till 7pm against the inoculation of 28, 593 on Thursday and 32,829 a day before.

Maharashtra has targeted inoculating 33.8mn people above 45 years.

Besides vaccines, Maharashtra also faced acute shortage of anti-viral drug Remdesivir and the oxygen while treating Covid-19 patients. Food and drugs administration minister Rajendra Shingne announced the state would procure oxygen from other neighbouring states and banned the use of oxygen for industrial purposes. “Our consumption of oxygen for Covid-19 patients on Thursday was 923metric tonnes against the production of 1,287 tonnes. The demand for patients is expected to go up as the number of the positive patients is expected to go up in the next few days. It is clear that our domestic production would not be sufficient for the demand and hence we have decided to procure it from states like Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. We have also increased the reservation of the production to 100% for medical use by banning industrial use for a few days,” he said.

Shingne said the supply of Remdesivir is expected to increase to 75,000 vials from the existing supply of 55,000 vials in the next few days. He said they have also directed production companies to tap the possibility of stalling the export of Remdesivir.