Vaccination for 18-44 years age group resumes after a day’s interruption

Patna resumed regular vaccination against coronavirus for the 18-44 years age group on Sunday, after forced interruption on Saturday, when it ran out of supplies

Patna resumed regular vaccination against coronavirus for the 18-44 years age group on Sunday, after forced interruption on Saturday, when it ran out of supplies.

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On paper, however, vaccination did not stop in the state capital even on Saturday. The State Health Society, Bihar (SHSB), which meticulously plans vaccination session sites depending on the availability of vaccines in the state, did well to operate six special camps, where it inoculated 822 people — a symbolic number though against a target population of 5.39 crore in the 18-44 years category in the state.

The special camps were held at different offices, including the Raj Bhawan, Delhivery, Chanakya Law University, Indian Oil, Judges Court City and the NTPC-Barh on Saturday.

All the 57 regular vaccination session sites, including the 46 rural and urban primary health centres in Patna, were shut in absence of vaccines, said an official who did not wish to be named.

Those trying to pre-book vaccination slots, a prerequisite for the 18-44 years population, had a harrowing time doing it on the CoWIN portal.

There were some districts left with less than 1,000 doses of vaccine, forcing them to close many vaccination session sites.

“We manage our session sites as per availability of vaccines. We have to do firefighting every day,” said Manoj Kumar, executive director, State Health Society, Bihar.

Patna civil surgeon Dr Vibha Kumari Singh also came out in defence of the government.

“We cannot entirely close vaccination in the district. So, we reduce the number of vaccination session sites to keep the vaccinations low in case of shortage of vaccines. We have no control over it (supplies),” said Dr Singh.

The state received 4.89 lakh doses of vaccine for the 18-44 years age group on Saturday. Out of this, Patna received around 50,000 doses of vaccines on Saturday evening and was able to revive its 57 session sites for vaccination on Sunday.

After being able to vaccinate 47,207 people on Saturday, the state inoculated 1,24,175 on Sunday against its initial target to vaccinate 2.50 lakh people per day against 7.50 crore people to be vaccinated in the state.