Amid vaccine shortage, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar forced to curtail drive

The pace of vaccinations has slowed in Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar with the Uttar Pradesh government not receiving enough vaccines to supply to the districts

The pace of vaccinations has slowed in Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar with the Uttar Pradesh government not receiving enough vaccines to supply to the districts.

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While the vaccination drive had suffered during the second wave of infections, the numbers had picked up since June 21 when the central government took over the vaccine procurement drive and distributed it to the states. From July 1, the state government had mooted a mega vaccination drive to vaccinate 1 million people a day. However, at present the state is vaccinating only about 800,000 people a day.

Ghaziabad

Ghaziabad has been forced to scale down its Covid-19 vaccination centres (CVC) from nearly 100 in the last week of June to nearly 60 as the district once again suffered from a shortage of vaccines, officials said on Tuesday.

Ghaziabad — which ranks third in the state on inoculations, after Lucknow (1,630,419 doses) and Gautam Budh Nagar (1,360,239 doses) — administered a total of 1,186,328 vaccine doses as of Tuesday morning.

“Operations in nearly 30 centres in areas like Loni, Raj Nagar Extension, among others have been suspended temporarily due to vaccine shortage and low turnout. At present, nearly 65 to 70 vaccination centres are operational,” said Dr GP Mathuria, nodal officer for vaccination in the district. “Nowadays, 8,000-12,000 vaccine doses are available per day.”

The district had aimed to vaccinate at least 40,000 people a day.

The shortage has hit Ghaziabad’s plan to initiate on-spot registrations for the cluster vaccination (close to home) for all adults. “We have the potential to administer nearly 30,000-40,000 vaccine doses per day, but the shortage has hampered the process. After receiving vaccines, we will scale up the regular vaccination,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer (CMO), Ghaziabad.

The district has also reduced special CVCs that had seen low turnouts.

“We have also converted four special CVCs — two exclusively for women and the other for parents — to general vaccination centres as the daily coverage at these centres ranged only between 45% and 60%. After the conversion, the turnout at these centres has increased,” said Dr Mathuria.

The district now has eight special CVCs thatcater to officials of government departments like railways, post office, revenue department, and labour among others. Meanwhile, two special CVCs for women, and as many for parents of children aged below 12 were converted to general centres.

According to data available on Tuesday (July 13), Uttar Pradesh reported 59 fresh Covid-19 cases, 149 discharges and four deaths in the past 24 hours.The active caseload in the state is at 1,479, with total discharges and deaths at 1,683,319 and 22,704, respectively.

Gautam Budh Nagar

In Gautam Budh Nagar too, the vaccine shortage has slowed the drive and forced the district to suspend walk-in registrations since July 1. The district had aimed to vaccinate at least 40,000 people a day too, which is now at around 6,000 to 9,000.

Nearly 60% of the over 1.3 million doses of the vaccines against Covid-19 administered in Gautam Budh Nagar till Monday have gone to those below 45 years, while 25% went to those between 45 and 60 years of age, according to official data.

GB Nagar district magistrate, Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj, said that out of nearly 1.6 million people in the district, who are eligible for inoculation, over 70% had been administered at least one dose, while the rest of the beneficiaries were from outside the district.

“Out of total doses administered in the district, 38% are women. Had the pace of vaccination not slowed in July, we could have given at least one dose of the vaccines to all the eligible population by the end of this month,” he said. “Due to state-wide paucity of vaccines, the near-to-home vaccination is unlikely to take off before the last week of the month in the district. For kicking off the mega vaccination drive, we need at least 100,000 doses in the first lot. Since at present, the state headquarters don’t have ample stock of vaccines, we have to carry on the vaccination drive with the available stock of vaccines.”

Officials said that the shortage is likely to remain till July 20.