PMC runs out of Covid vaccine stock, CVCs to remain closed today
At least 50 fresh Covid cases were reported on Friday in PMC. Officials claim they have been waiting for fresh vaccine stock for the past two months
PUNE Amidst a surge in Covid-19 cases, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has run out of Covid-19 vaccine stock. This has forced the civic body to keep their Covid Vaccination Centres (CVCs) closed on Saturday.
At least 50 fresh Covid cases were reported on Friday in PMC. Officials claim they have been waiting for fresh vaccine stock for the past two months.
PMC has written to the state public health department requesting to supply fresh stock of Covid-19 vaccines two months back. The civic body had even sent reminders to the state government in the past, but to no avail.
PMC received stock of 13,000 Covishield doses and 10,000 Covaxin doses in January this year. After which there was no supply of Covishield vaccine doses. However, a few doses of Covaxin were supplied by the state government to the civic body, but in the last two months, there has been no supply of Covishield doses.
Dr Suryakant Devkar, assistant health officer, PMC, said there is no stock of the Covid-19 vaccine with us now and all the CVCs will remain closed tomorrow (Saturday).
“There has been no fresh supply of vaccines from the state government. The stock of Covishield vaccine was exhausted in February and Covishield stock got exhausted on Friday. Now there is no stock due to which we have to keep the immunisation closed until fresh stock is received,” he said.
As per the PMC officials, Pune city reported as many as 65 Covid-19 cases in January, followed by 86 cases in February and 777 cases in March respectively.
Since the precautionary doses were started by PMC on 16 January 2021, at least 3.59 lakh people (10.80 per cent) of the 33.30 lakh eligible citizens have taken the doses. However, a larger chunk of 37.16 lakh (111%) people have taken their first dose of the vaccine and 3.14 lakh (94%) of people have taken their second dose, according to officials.
Dr Bhagwan Pawar, health officer of PMC, said, we have requested the public health department officials to provide us with the vaccine at the earliest. “We are expecting a rise in the number of people coming forward for immunisation as the cases of Covid-19 are on the rise. I will speak to the officials and try to make the vaccine available at the earliest,” he said.
PMC health officials at the CVC now will start taking details of beneficiaries who visit the vaccination centre for doses. The staff will call these people for immunisation once the stock is received.
Dr Sachin Desai, state immunisation officer, said there is currently no stock of vaccine available with us and the stock will be sent to the local bodies as soon as we receive the supply. “We cannot exactly say when the fresh stock will arrive and I need to check about the same,” he said.