Many Maharashtra districts to run out of COVID vaccine stock soon; NOIDA, Ghaziabad too hint at shortage

Several districts in Maharashtra will run out of the COVID-19 vaccine stock in a day or two and the Centre has been informed about it, a senior state health official said on Wednesday.

As on Wednesday morning, the state has around 14 lakh vaccine doses, principal secretary (health) Pradeep Vyas told PTI.

"Many districts will run out of the stock today or tomorrow. The Centre is aware of the situation and (we) have also communicated in writing," he said.

Maharashtra can easily administer five lakh vaccine shots in a day if there is a clarity on schedule and availability, the official said.

We do not have enough vaccine doses at various vaccination centres, and people have to be sent back due to a shortage of doses. We have demanded from the Centre that people of age group 20-40 years must be vaccinated on priority, said Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope to news agency ANI.

We are working on war footing to increase the number of beds in Pune, Mumbai, Nashik and other parts of the State, said Tope

12 metric tonnes of oxygen is produced and over 7 tonnes of oxygen is consumed daily. We've demanded that we should be supplied medical oxygen from nearby states. If needed, we'll close down industries that use oxygen but won't let supply of medical oxygen be affected, said Tope

For the last few days, the state has been vaccinating about four lakh people daily.

Nearly 82 lakh people have been vaccinated so far in Maharashtra since the roll-out of the inoculation drive.

According to a report in Times of India, Noida had just a little over 13,000 doses of Covishield and Covaxin each while only around 12,000 doses in all remained available in Ghaziabad, after vaccination on Tuesday. All eyes are now on the vaccine vans that are to arrive from Meerut. This touch-and-go on stocks has raised the possibility that some centres may face a vaccine shortage on Wednesday too.

On April 5, Economic Times reported that four states have red-flagged running out of stock of the vaccine. Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Odisha have told the Centre that inventory is running low. Haryana has slowed down Covaxin jabs as stocks of the Bharat Biotech vaccine are limited. Chhattisgarh has told the health ministry its doses will last until April 6 and it will be forced to take a day’s break if stocks are not replenished, the report in Economic Times had said.

An official statement on Tuesday said Maharashtra had received 1.06 crore doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, out of which 88 lakh doses have been used while the wastage stood at three per cent.

It said the state government will vigorously pursue its demand for more stock of vaccine doses, considering the rapid rise in the COVID-19 cases and expansion of the vaccination drive.

Notably, state Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to allow people above 25 years to receive COVID-19 shots, which he said will protect the young people from the rapid spread of the viral infection at a time when they are stepping outside their homes to earn a livelihood.

In a letter to the PM, Thackeray also demanded that Maharashtra be provided 1.5 crore additional doses of vaccines, which will enable the state government to complete within three weeks the vaccination of beneficiaries above 45 years of age in six districts, including Mumbai.

with PTI inputs