While many states are complaining about the shortage of vaccines despite allowing substantial stocks to go to waste, the vaccine wastage in Uttar Pradesh has dropped to less than 1 per cent.
“The wastage of both Covishield and Covaxin has been brought down over the past two-and-a-half months to under 1 per cent, as per the Health department data of June 12. The consistent efforts made by the state government, including increasing the pace of inoculation, have resulted in total wastage of vaccine to 0.89 per cent,” a government spokesman said here on Friday.
He said 36 districts of Uttar Pradesh recorded the Covaxin wastage in negative, which shows more people are being inoculated than the intended number. The wastage for Covaxin is merely 0.87 per cent. “When it comes to Covishield, the state recorded only 0.92 per cent total wastage with 25 districts showing a negative wastage figure,” he pointed out.
Vaccine wastage refers to the number of doses wasted as compared to those administered during the inoculation exercise. Vaccine wastage can primarily be divided into two categories; wastage in unopened vials and wastage in opened vials.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has made repeated requests for bringing down the vaccine wastage to zero during his high-level Covid review meetings. In fact, the CM has directed the officials to plan the scaling up of vaccination coverage through available stocks and anticipated supplies.
“Vaccine management is an equally important element and we are very mindful of keeping it to the minimum,” a health official said.
The state is clocking around 4 lakh vaccinations a day and planning to vaccinate around 10 lakh people from July. In the last 24 hours, more than 4,04,192 people got their vaccine doses in the state.
So far, Uttar Pradesh has administered a total of 2.46 crore vaccine doses, of which 2,07,28,945 were first doses.