Vaccine crisis: GB Nagar admin to run only 3 vaccine centres today

NOIDA: After repeated claims that Gautam Budh Nagar district has adequate doses of Covid-19 vaccines, district health officials admitted on Friday that there is an acute crisis of vials

NOIDA: After repeated claims that Gautam Budh Nagar district has adequate doses of Covid-19 vaccines, district health officials admitted on Friday that there is an acute crisis of vials. The revelation comes on a day when the district reported 225 fresh Covid-19 cases on Friday, the highest single-day case surge registered so far this year.

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According to the state health bulletin, the Covid-19 tally in the district increased to 27,046 on Friday. The death toll stood at 93 as no fresh fatalities from the infection were reported in the last 24 hours.

The shortage of vaccines has forced the district administration to run only three inoculation centres on Saturday (today), where beneficiaries will be administered only Covaxin jabs.

After the vaccination drive concluded on Friday, only 7,727 vaccine doses-- 798 doses of Covishield and 6,929 shots of Covaxin--are in the stock of the district.

District magistrate of Gautam Budh Nagar Suhas LY said the district will get the next lot of vaccine from Agra and Meerut depots by Saturday morning. “It can’t be called a crisis as we inoculated 68,343 people against the target of 53,000 beneficiaries in the first nine days of April. The shortage of the vaccine is only due to the imbalance between the demand and supply as we used 12 days’ stock in nine days. I have spoken with the higher officials. We will get ample doses of the vaccine by Saturday. From Sunday, the vaccination drive will regain momentum,” he said.

District chief medical officer (CMO) Dr Deepak Ohri said that if the issue of vaccine shortage persists, the inoculation drive after Saturday will be badly affected. “We are left with only 7,727 vaccine doses. Since a major portion of the stock is Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, we have little option but to reduce the vaccination centres from 60 (on Friday) to three on Saturday.”

The district hospital in sector 30, the Super Specialty Paediatric Hospital and Post Graduate Teaching Institute – better known as Child PGI-- in sector 39, and the Government Institute of Medical Sciences (GIMS) in Greater Noida will provide only Covaxin jabs to the registered beneficiaries,” said Ohri.

Additional chief medical officer (ACMO), Dr Neeraj Tyagi, who is also the in-charge of Covid-19 vaccination in the district, said 12,000 vaccine doses have been wasted so far. “Nearly 8,500 doses were wasted during the vaccination drive of health care workers and frontline workers in January and February. After that, the percentage of wastage has gone below 2%,” he said.