E-Paper
K’taka receives 200k Covishield doses
Bengaluru The Karnataka government on Wednesday said that it has received around 200,000 doses of vaccines from Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) as part of its purchase order for 20 million doses
Bengaluru The Karnataka government on Wednesday said that it has received around 200,000 doses of vaccines from Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) as part of its purchase order for 20 million doses.
“Karnataka received 2,00,000 doses of Covishied today as part of the order placed by the state govt. So far state has received 10,94,000 doses (9,50,000 Covishield and 1,44,000 Covaxin) as part of direct procurement from manufacturers in addition to 1,11,24,470 doses received from GoI,” K Sudhakar, Karnataka’s minister for health, family welfare and medical education tweeted.
The state government has so far placed orders for at least 30 million doses of vaccines from both SII and Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech that produces Covaxin.
But late delivery of vaccines owing to demands from across the country, forced Karnataka to suspend its vaccination drive of the first dose for both persons above 45 years of age as well as those who fall in between the 18-44 category.
The shortage of vaccines has brought down the daily inoculations to 65,181 on Tuesday (till 3.30 pm) that takes the total to 11,348,708. However, only 25,30,724 persons have received both doses which accounts for less than 4% of the state’s entire population, estimated at 60.5 million.
Karnataka remains one of the most impacted regions in the country as cases continue to surge in most places even though it has shown signs of letting up in Bengaluru, which has the highest number of active cases in India.
Though the decline raises hopes of some reprieve for the state, testing has dropped dramatically, which experts and others attributed as the cause for the lower number of new infections.
“The second way forward for the state is that everyone in Karnataka should be administered the vaccines at the earliest. The government is striving towards ensuring 100% coverage to the entire population by October or November end,” Sudhakar said in Bengaluru on Wednesday.
He said that the centre has so far provided the state with 1,11,26,340 doses. Of the purchases made directly by the state government, it has so far received 9.50 lakhs of covishield and 144,170 doses of Covaxin.
He said that the centre and its own purchases takes the total doses received by the state to 12220510 so far.
“We are looking to import vaccines from abroad and we are talking to Bharat Biotech and they have assured to provide the same,” the minister added.
He added that even Russia-developed Sputnik will have a manufacturing plant in Karnataka which raises hopes of completing the vaccination drive to all its residents “before the entire country”.
