Bihar’s unmet demand of vaccine goes up with Covid cases

Over 3.49 crore precautionary doses or as many people are still to take their precautionary dose among the 5.9 crore adult population in the state, said health officials.

PATNA: The unmet demand for vaccine against coronavirus (Covid-19) is growing with new cases, which more than doubled to 46 in Bihar during the last 24 hours on Saturday, taking the number of active cases in the state to 109, said state health officials on Sunday.

With the state having achieved only 27% coverage of booster doses for its adult population, inquiries for Covid-19 vaccine have risen since last Monday after a 27-year-old woman from Rohtas district became the first in the state to test positive for XBB.1.16, currently the dominant subvariant of Omicron across the country.

“The demand for Covid-19 vaccine has risen of late. We get many inquiries about the vaccines, and their likely availability, but are unable to give people a tentative date,” said Dr. SP Vinayak, district immunisation officer of Patna, which accounted for 68 active cases as on Saturday.

The state exhausted its stock of vaccines on March 31 and has informed the Centre about it, chief minister Nitish Kumar had said on April 7 while speaking to media persons on the sidelines of the inauguration of the health department’s new building at Patna’s Sheikhpura locality.

Over 3.49 crore precautionary doses or as many people are still to take their precautionary dose among the 5.9 crore adult population in the state, said health officials.

Of the total 15.72 crore vaccine doses administered so far in the state, 7.34 crore first doses, 6.79 crore second doses, and 1.58 crore precautionary doses have been given, as per data on the CoWIN portal.

The demand for vaccines has a direct correlation with new Covid-19 cases, said officials.

It had gone up last December and January when there was a minor surge in cases of Omicron. The state had then run out of stock of Covishield in November even as it had supplies of Covaxin, before receiving 1.5 lakh doses of Covishield in January-February.

Though most of Covishield was utilised, a small percentage of Covaxin, believed to be less than 10,000 doses of the nearly 4 crore doses received from the Centre, expired, as many eligible beneficiaries were not willing to take the booster shot, officials said.

Covaxin accounted for 25% of the state’s total vaccine administered, with Covishield accounting for most of the remaining 75%, along with CorBEvax, Covovax, and Sputnik V.

The state health society, managing the vaccination programme, did not share the state’s vaccine utilisation data.