Vax shortage mars mega vaccination drive in Noida, Ghaziabad

NOIDA/GHAZIABAD: Even after suspension of vaccination drive for two days, Gautam Budh Nagar district could not muster enough vials of Covid-19 vaccines to kick off the near-to-home mega vaccination drive in the district on Thursday

NOIDA/GHAZIABAD: Even after suspension of vaccination drive for two days, Gautam Budh Nagar district could not muster enough vials of Covid-19 vaccines to kick off the near-to-home mega vaccination drive in the district on Thursday. Though the district health department had planned to inoculate at least 40,000 people without slot booking every day in July, with some 8,000-odd doses available it had no option than to give the jabs to only those who had booked their slots for Thursday.

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Going by sources, the situation is likely to persist in the first fortnight of July with fewer number of cluster vaccination centres administering jabs.

District magistrate Suhas LY said that due to state-wide paucity of vaccines, the near-to-home vaccination is unlikely to take off in the first half of the month in the Gautam Budh Nagar district. “For the mega vaccination drive, we had sent a requisition of 100,000 doses for the first lot, before it was to kick off. However, as the state headquarters have to evenly distribute the available stock of vaccines, we could only get around 8,000 doses on Wednesday. As many as 6,789 persons were vaccinated at 37 government health centres on Thursday,” he said.

Echoing similar views, district chief medical officer (CMO) Dr Deepak Ohri said that for Friday, the district health department has received around 8,000 doses. “Till more stock comes, we’ll continue vaccination with the available doses. The staff has been told to give jabs to only those who have booked their slots for that particular site. This practice will continue till further notice,” he said.

According to the Co-WIN portal, till Thursday as many as 1,170,218 doses have been administered in the Gautam Budh Nagar district, of which 1,033,127 people have taken their first dose.

In Ghaziabad as well, officials said they have been getting only 8,000-9,000 doses per day for the past two days.

“For the cluster vaccination drive, we had planned to administer about 35,000-40,000 doses per day but the process has been hampered due to short supply. Still, we are creating sessions as per vaccine availability,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer.

Officials familiar with the development said they have learnt that supply will be restored within a fortnight. They added that during normal days, they run 90-100 sessions for vaccinations, which have reduced to about 40-42 sessions due to supply issues.

“People come to our centre early to get the shots but with limited supply, we could only administer 200 doses in the morning and with great efforts, could manage 200 more doses by afternoon. There was a huge rush at our centre in the morning and we had to rope in the police for help. Normally, we administer 500-600 doses per day,” said Dr Sanjay Teotia, chief medical superintendent of Sanjay Nagar Combined District Hospital.

Under the cluster vaccination program which was to start from Thursday, the district had planned vaccination in 568 clusters in urban and rural areas with 9,176 sessions.

“Several centres are not able to run their vaccination drives due to short supply. We are trying to provide doses to centres which have been initiated by local councilors or pradhans, however they are also getting few doses. We have told them that once the supply is regularised, sufficient doses will be provided,” said an officer from the health department who wished not to be named.