Fresh stock lands; ‘Vaccine Express’ carries the day, red faces in its wake

PATNA Bihar’s health department had to face some embarrassing moments when its refrigerated van, the “Vaccine Express”, failed to start after the much-awaited consignment of Covid-19 vaccines, airlifted from Pune, had been loaded in it at the Patna airport on Friday

PATNA

HT Image

Bihar’s health department had to face some embarrassing moments when its refrigerated van, the “Vaccine Express”, failed to start after the much-awaited consignment of Covid-19 vaccines, airlifted from Pune, had been loaded in it at the Patna airport on Friday.

As many as 89,689 vials, each containing 10 doses of Covishield, arrived by a SpiceJet flight around 1.40 pm.

However, the vehicle, sent to transport the vaccines from the airport to the state’s vaccine depot at the Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMCH) in Patna, failed to start as its battery had drained out.

With vaccines in it, the driver requested some bystanders to push the van, leaving health officials accompanying it red-faced. Minutes later, the vehicle started and then revved up.

The state health department has had to do face some challenging moments over the past few days among spiraling Covid-19 cases and dwindling stocks of the vaccine.

Covid-19 vaccines had dried up at the state vaccine depot on Tuesday. The health department had to close down some vaccination session sites, bringing their number them down from over 2,000 to 1,234 in the state on Thursday due to shortage of vaccines. While advising districts to go slow on vaccination, it also had to reallocate vaccines from underperforming districts to locations where utilisation was more.

Bihar has a storage capacity of 51 lakh vials at its state vaccine store in Patna and 10 regional vaccine stores.