Maharashtra’s vaccination drive slows down for want of doses

For a third day in a row, Maharashtra’s daily Covid-19 vaccinations went below the 100,000 mark owing to the unavailability of doses, resulting in fewer inoculation sessions across the state.

For a third day in a row, Maharashtra’s daily Covid-19 vaccinations went below the 100,000 mark owing to the unavailability of doses, resulting in fewer inoculation sessions across the state.

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There is uncertainty over the full-fledged resumption of the drive from Tuesday, as the state is yet to get its fresh stock of 1.05 million doses, promised to be delivered in the next three days by the Centre. From 534,228 doses, the state’s highest one-day inoculation figures, administered on April 26, Maharashtra’s daily numbers dropped to 47,613 on May 2 and 78,759 on May 3, according to figures on the CoWIN portal.

After keeping the number of daily inoculations over 100,000 doses throughout April, it dropped below the mark for the past three days. In April alone, 10 million doses were administered in Maharashtra. Even after launching the third phase for beneficiaries in the 18-44 age group on May 1, the day’s count stood at 95,240.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said the state will get 1,050,000 more doses in three days. The ministry has stated that as of 8am on Monday, the state has administered 16,338,923 of the 16,362,470 doses supplied by the Centre. The state government has merely 23,547 doses with it, as of Monday.

State authorities said many centres were shut on Monday for both the 18-44 and above 45 age groups, owing to the non-availability of doses.

“After supplying about 16 million doses in 110 days of the drive for the beneficiaries above 45 years, the supply has now come down by half from May 1, as per the changed policy. This means the vaccination rate will dwindle to half of its pace in April henceforth for 45-plus beneficiaries because of reduction in the supply by the Centre. The pace of the vaccination for the age groups of 18-44 years cannot pick up unless we procure the stock from two domestic manufacturers — Serum Institute of India (Covishield) and Bharat Biotech (Covaxin),” said an official from the health department.

According to the changed policy by the Centre, half of the vaccines manufactured by these two players, will go to the government of India, while the remaining half will be available for procurement by state governments, private hospitals and industrial sector.

Dr DN Patil, state immunisation officer, said they expect a fresh stock of about 450,000 doses of Covaxin in the next couple of days for the age group of 18-44 years. “After we received 300,000 doses of Covishield, we rolled out the third phase from May 1 with 3 to 10 centres per district for the age group. We will add similar number of centres after getting a fresh stock of Covaxin,” he said.

The state government has placed a demand for 120 million doses at the rate of 20 million a month as it wishes to complete vaccination of 57.1 million people in the age group of 18-44 years in six months. According to the officials, though the state is ready to import the doses of other vaccines from manufacturers like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson , there is no stock available in the international market. The officials feel that the pace of vaccination is expected to be low through the entire month of May.