A day after Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan slammed a few States for playing “vax politics” and vaccine mismanagement, reports of shortage of vaccine poured in from some parts of the country where people had to be turned away.
So far, over nine crore vaccine doses have been administered across the country, said the Minister even as he ruled out any shortage of the jabs. However, States such as Maharashtra, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have complained of supply deficit amid the second wave of the pandemic.
Stating that there was no shortage of jabs in the country, Harsh Vardhan said 9.1 crore vaccine doses have been utilised, while 2.4 crore are in stock and 1.9 crore vaccines are in the pipeline.
“Hue and cry by certain States about partisanship by the Union Government is just a farce, an attempt to hide their own incompetence. Maharashtra and Rajasthan are 2 of the top 3 States based on allocation of Covid-19 vaccine doses. Both are non-BJP-governed States,” Vardhan said in a tweet.
These States have now sent the SOS to the Centre seeking sufficient jabs to inoculate the eligible population.
“Vaccination centres have to close early due to a shortage of supplies,” Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope said adding that stocks would run out in three days after the daily injection of over 4,50,000 doses.
The Odisha Government too echoed similar fears stating that it has supplies left only for two more days and as many as 700 of its vaccination centres had to be shut down due to the scarcity of jabs. In a letter to Harsh Vardhan, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said that as of April 7, Odisha had a stock of 5.34 lakh doses of Covishield - the vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India - in its inventory.
“With this stock, we will be able to continue vaccination for the next two days,” Patnaik said. “By 9th April, there will be stock-out of Covishield vaccine in the entire State. We are vaccinating about 2.5 lakh persons daily.”
“Due to shortage of vaccine, we have had to close nearly 700 vaccination centres in the State (out of over 1400 functional sites, only 755 could be made active today [Wednesday]).”
A few private hospitals in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad district have not been vaccinating people since Monday. The hospitals have put up notices informing people that they have run out of doses.
“We don’t have vaccine stock since Monday,” Dr Alok Gupta, the director Lyf Hospital in Indirapuram said, according to a news channel.
The Government data showed that Maharashtra got 7.5 lakh doses, Uttar Pradesh 48 lakh, Madhya Pradesh 40 lakh, Gujarat 30 lakh and Haryana 24 lakh doses.
However, while the Centre and States are at the loggerheads on the vaccine availability, the US-based Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Centre has said India has been the largest buyer of Covid jabs in the world with pre-booking of 1.6 billion doses.
The global report said that India had pre-ordered 500 million doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine, one billion from the US company Novavax (to be made at the Serum Institute of India in Pune) and 100 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
According to the global analysis, India was the top Covid-19 vaccine buyer, followed by the European Union (EU) and the US. “Countries with manufacturing capacity, such as India and Brazil, have been successful in negotiating large advance market commitments with leading vaccine candidates as part of the manufacturing agreements,” the Duke researchers said in their analysis.
They also pointed out that a populous country like India cannot depend on just two local vaccine manufacturers and have to procure and develop pre-booked vaccines in order to vaccinate more and more people across age groups.
India will need to give 36.5 lakh shots per day until the end of July, in order to achieve the target of vaccinating 25 crore people with two doses.
The SII is aiming to expand its capacity by April-end or early May by another 4-5 crore doses. At present, it can produce more than 7 crore doses a month.
Currently, Bharat Biotech is producing more than 40 lakh doses of Covaxin per month at its Hyderabad-based plant. However, these figures are not enough to achieve the vaccination targets.