Shortage of vaccine doses forces PMC to cancel registrations

PUNE A day after receiving 50,000 doses of Covaxin, instead of one lakh doses of Covishield, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had to cancel scheduled registrations on Monday

PUNE A day after receiving 50,000 doses of Covaxin, instead of one lakh doses of Covishield, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had to cancel scheduled registrations on Monday.

HT Image

The civic body has now decided to ensure that no hospital provides both the vaccines at the same site.

The civic body’s current stock of the vaccine – Covaxin and Covishield - is enough for only a week, if the current daily rate of vaccination remains the same.

Ironically, the Serum Institute of India, which has manufactured and supplied the Covishield vaccine to multiple countries across the world, is located in Pune.

After a meeting with divisional commissioner Saurabh Rao, the civic body decided that Kamala Nehru hospital and the Rajiv Gandhi hospital, both run by the PMC, would provide only a second dose of Covishield.

This will mainly include health care workers who started getting the vaccine from January 16, and frontline workers who began getting inoculated on February 8.

Phase two of the vaccination drive began on March 1, and second doses will only begin from March 28, onwards.

Until now, PMC has vaccinated a total of 1.46 lakh beneficiaries, of which, 11,911 have completed their vaccination course after the second dose.

The PMC still needs 1,34,872 doses of Covishield, as both vaccine doses have to be the same as per government guidelines.

A senior PMC official said, “We currently have about 60,000 doses in the pipeline, of which 33,000 are with government hospitals and the rest with private hospitals. We are expecting more doses, but they would probably be Covaxin and so now, we are awaiting Covishield stock which will be given as second doses.”

The PMC returned 15,000 of a 20,000 stock of Covishield doses received on Monday evening from the PCMC, as the PCMC is also seeing a huge response to the vaccination drive from its citizens.

On Monday, many beneficiaries did not get the vaccine as their scheduled slots were cancelled, or hospitals put up notices stating that vaccinations have been temporarily suspended.

One such citizen, PS Gadkari, 82, who lives in Wadgaonsheri, registered three of his family members, which was later cancelled.

He said, “I had registered myself and two of my relatives, Nanda (61) and Bapu Kamble (64) for vaccination on Saturday at PMC’s Meenatai Thackeray health centre. However, on Monday afternoon I got a message that the registration has been cancelled and that we will have to re-register.”

Dr Ashish Bharti, chief health officer, PMC, said, “We asked for one lakh doses which would be enough for 10 days, given that we have 60,000 doses currently and about 15,000 people are vaccinated daily. However, we only got 50,000 doses of Covaxin. We will now keep two of our hospitals exclusively for a second dose of Covishield and rest only for Covaxin to avoid confusion. If we allow both the vaccines to be administered this could lead to a lot of confusion and also possibly a mix- up of the vaccines, since the doses are administered by auxillary nurses and midwives.”

He further added that the civic body will now pull back all its Covishield stock from hospitals and divert it to two designated hospitals, while the remaining civic hospitals and clinics would be supplied with Covaxin.