Indore: Free Covid-19 vaccine centres: Health department downs shutters

Indore (Madhya Pradesh): If you have not taken the ‘third dose’ of Covid-19 vaccine yet, then you have missed the chance to get the free vaccination dose. The stock of vaccine in the district has dried up as the health department has “consumed” the remaining doses of vaccine before the expiry on February 9.

For the same reasons, the health department will shut the free vaccination centres in the city as there is uncertainty over getting another stock vaccine doses.

According to the health department officials, only about 860 doses of Covishield doses were left in the stock on February 8 and over 700 were “consumed” on Wednesday.

“We don’t have any Covid vaccine doses left in the stock except for a few doses of Covishield which are not enough to run a single vaccination centre,” district immunization officer, Dr Tarun Gupta, said.

He said they received the Covishield doses with short expiry tenures and they successfully administered the same.

“We had a stock of over 22,000 Covaxin doses in January, but it was distributed to nearby districts. We only had about 5,000 doses of Covaxin left which we administered in the last 15 days by running door-to-door campaigns across the district. We had run out of stock of Covaxin about a week ago,” he added.

“We will shut the number of vaccination centres and we are not sure if we shall receive new stock. We don’t have any communique for the same,” he said.

According to the health department’s record, as many as 28 lakh people are eligible for doses in Indore district i.e., the adult population, but only about 5 lakh people have taken the ‘third dose’ so far.

The government had provided a free precaution dose of vaccination for 75 days, starting from July 16, under ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’.

However, the government continued the free vaccination drive even after completing 75 days due to the poor response.