Paucity of vaccines puts a brake on inoculation drive in GB Nagar

NOIDA: The near-to-home mega vaccination drive, which was supposed to kick off from July 1, is yet to be started in Gautam Budh Nagar, thanks to the shortage of Covid-19 vaccine in the district

NOIDA: The near-to-home mega vaccination drive, which was supposed to kick off from July 1, is yet to be started in Gautam Budh Nagar, thanks to the shortage of Covid-19 vaccine in the district. Health officials on Sunday said that the situation is unlikely to improve in the next 10 days.

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The GB Nagar health department had claimed to vaccinate at least 30,000 persons every day in July. But, the limited supply of vaccines has kept the daily vaccination figures to less than 10,000 in the district this month, the officials said.

The GB Nagar district magistrate, Suhas LY, admitted that the near-to-home vaccination has been affected by the vaccine scarcity. “The district is not getting enough doses of vaccine. As a result, we are unable to kick off the near-to-home vaccination. The state headquarters have been informed about the vaccine shortage and we hope to get adequate vials very soon,” he said.

Senior health officials said that several vaccination centres in the district have been closed for the past few days due to inadequate supply of vaccines.

“We had to shut down several vaccination session sites on Saturday. We had fixed a target to inoculate at least 30,000 people in a day in July. But due to paucity of vaccines, we are not setting any daily target now. As per our information, the similar situation will continue at least for another 10 days,” said Dr Deepak Ohri, district chief medical officer.

District immunisation officer Dr Neeraj Tyagi said that the district has nearly 10,000 doses of vaccine in the inventory at present to continue the vaccination on Monday. “We have administered 80,449 doses at different government health centres in the first 11 days of July, which includes two Sundays, when no vaccination takes place. It indicates that we’ve administered, on average, less than 10,000 vaccine daily,” he said.

It may be noted that in the last two consecutive days of June, the Covid-19 vaccination drive remained suspended at the government health centres due to a shortage of vaccine doses.