Centre's vax doses insufficient, big blow to inoculation drives

Kolkata: Vaccination drives both in the government sector and the private establishments received a major blow as the Centre failed to supply not even half of the total requisition of doses for the current month.

Bengal was supposed to get around 73 lakh doses (Covishield and Covaxin combined) but till now, the state has received around 33 lakh. Till July 15, it had received a substantial amount of around 23 lakh doses while on July 21, it had further received around 9.3 lakh additional doses. With only seven days to go, the state is yet to receive around 40 lakh doses out of its total requisition for the month. At least 1.5 lakh people in the state are yet to receive their second dose of Covaxin while there is none in the Central Medical Store.

Private vaccination scenario is now way better. Due to an alleged delay in the supply of Covid vaccines, many private hospitals may scale down their requisition further affecting the daily COVID-19 shots in Bengal.

Private vaccination centres have to wait for at least 15-17 days after placing an order. Since July 1, the private vaccination centres have been placing their order on the CoWIN app and it has become the only medium to get the vaccine.

"Cash paid earlier is yet to be refunded and it takes around 10-12 days for the order to get verified and approved. Once it happens, payment is made and then it takes another at least 7-10 days for the consignment to arrive," a senior official of a private hospital in the city said.

Another official of a private hospital said: "We had paid over Rs 3 crore for the consignment of 50,000 doses but we received only 30,000 so far. If there is a delay in the supply and the money gets blocked for long, we would have no option but to scale down our order."

Barasat Cancer Hospital, which has been catering to a huge number of people from various parts of North 24-Parganas, may also suffer vaccine crunch if the situation continues.

It has been vaccinating 400-500 people daily on an average basis since the immunisation began on June 1. The authorities have been exploiting their resources to ensure an uninterrupted service so that people are not deprived.

"We are trying our best to continue the drive. We may have to place an order of 1,200 vials in August," said Goutam Basu, Assistant Secretary (Administration).

Chaos broke out at various state-run vaccination centres on Friday, including premier institution like SSKM where people seeking Covaxin had to go back empty-handed.

A clash broke out at Durgapur Sub-Divisional Hospital. The state has so far vaccinated 2,73,33,213 people till Friday whereas around 3,33,709 received a jab on Friday. The state has cumulatively vaccinated around 46,39,263 people belonging to the age bracket of 18-44 years.