Shortage of Covid vaccine hits inoculation drive at some centres in Pune dist

PUNE The district has been vaccinating at least 40,000 beneficiaries on an average daily, which is the highest in the state

PUNE The district has been vaccinating at least 40,000 beneficiaries on an average daily, which is the highest in the state. As of Tuesday, a cumulative 6.65 lakh beneficiaries have got their first dose of Covid vaccine in the district. As most beneficiaries get the vaccine each day, some session sites ran out of doses and had to shut down the centres early on Wednesday.

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The administration had to shut down session sites at nine talukas in rural Pune, while in the city a few private hospitals could not start the vaccination process.

Dr Vaishali Jadhav, assistant health chief, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), confirmed the shortage of vaccines and said, “It is true that there is a shortage of doses and a few private hospitals have said that they had to shut the vaccination centres as they do not have doses. We had distributed all the doses which we had got at our storage, except for 700 odd doses, to the private and government centres.”

“The hospitals schedule their appointments as per the doses available with them so no one is sent back. However, we will get a fresh stock of doses by Wednesday evening which we will distribute by late night,” she said.

Ayush Prasad, Zilla Parishad, chief executive officer, said, “We had to stop vaccination at Junnar, Purandar, Bhor, Velha, Mulshi, Haveli, Daund, Ambegaon and Purandar. We also had to reallocate vaccines from some of our own sites to the other centres where we did not have enough vaccines. For Tuesday and Wednesday (March 30-31) we had only 20,000 doses which we had received from Solapur earlier.”

At least 39,385 beneficiaries got vaccinated on Wednesday and the numbers are likely to increase as more people become eligible to get the vaccine from today.

The government has opened vaccination for all above 45 years of age with or without comorbidities which earlier was restricted to only those with comorbidities in the age group of 45-59. With the district reporting maximum new cases in the state, the district administration is rushing to vaccinate a maximum number of people even as only a limited stock comes for every week.

Dist gets fresh stock of 3.25 lakh doses

On Wednesday evening, Pune received a fresh stock of 3,25,780 lakh doses of Covishield out of which PMC got 1,40,000 doses, Pune rural got 1,40,000 doses and Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) got 45,780 doses and in the next few days, the district is expected to receive one more lakh doses of the vaccine.