Vaccine shortage: no Covishield at PMC centres until Monday

PUNE The city has been facing an acute shortage of vaccines for the past two days, which has meant that the PMC has to shut down its Covishield vaccinations and only run Covaxin centres

PUNE The city has been facing an acute shortage of vaccines for the past two days, which has meant that the PMC has to shut down its Covishield vaccinations and only run Covaxin centres.

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August will now also see a huge demand from those aged 18-plus for their second dose of Covishield.

On Thursday and Friday, PMC shut down its centres for Covishield and before that, for four days, from Saturday to Tuesday, Covishield vaccination sites were shut due to a shortage of supply.

Dr Suryakant Deokar, immunisation officer, PMC, said, “We are yet to get any Covishield vaccine doses as of Friday evening and even if we get the doses on Saturday, we cannot start the vaccination drive on Sunday, because we have the usual OPDs. On Sunday the Covid-19 immunisation team gets a break. However, if the vaccines come on Saturday or Sunday then we would be able to start the Covishield vaccination drive on Monday. so for over four days we would have not had any Covishield vaccination at the PMC centres. Last week too we could not arrange any Covishield through PMC because we did not have vaccine doses.”

This comes two days after state health minister Rajesh Tope announced that districts which report a higher positivity rate will get more vaccines. Such districts which have a higher positivity rate include Pune, Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara. However, the shortage of vaccines continues in Pune. While government centres are falling short of vaccine doses, private hospitals got 10,000 doses of covishield on Friday, for the second consecutive day.