As cases drop, demand of Covid vaccine declines

KOLKATA: Demand of Covid vaccination in Bengal has gone down with the people no longer interested to get a jab. This is because the daily Covid infection has gone below 20.

According to Health department sources, there are no Covishield doses in the stock currently whereas 45,000 Covaxin doses are still left with the state health department. The Centre is also not sending Covid vaccines on a regular basis. On October 31, more than 1.22 lakh doses of Covaxine were sent off to Vijayawada by the state Health department as there was no such demand. If these vaccines would have been kept here for long, they would have perished, sources said.

State has so far administered 73,038,635 Covid first doses cumulatively while 64,953,385 second doses have been applied cumulatively so far in the state. The demand of Covid vaccination had gone up for the last time during July-August when the infection had shot up. The number of Covid patients getting admitted to the critical care units of various hospitals were on the rise in June. Cov booster dose demand doubled in private hospitals during that time.

Incidentally, the State on Thursday registered 5 new Covid cases which is the lowest figure since the pandemic broke out. The figure remained the same on Wednesday as well. On Monday the figure stood at 11. Covid situation in the state has much improved in the past couple of weeks with daily infection consistently remaining below 20 in the past few weeks.

Fatality rate was registered at 1.02 per cent on Thursday. The Covid positivity rate on Thursday stood at 0.10 per cent. State has seen 21,18,438 Covid cases so far out of which around 20,96,788 people have been recovered. Around 5,207 samples were tested in the state on Thursday. Bengal has so far seen 21,531 Covid death tolls so far. Around 26,798,629 Covid sample tests so far till date. As many as 29 patients have been discharged from hospitals in the past 24 hours as they recovered from Covid. Recovery rate stood at 98.98 per cent on Thursday. Around 10 Covid patients are undergoing treatment in hospitals while 109 people are in home isolation. None is in Safe Homes.