Setting an example for other civic bodies across the Thane district, the health department of the Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) is not only leading the vaccination drive with the highest inoculations, but it has also reported negative figures in terms of wastage of Covid-19 vaccines. This also shows that the central government's expectations of keeping vaccine wastage below 1 percent is neither unrealistic nor undesirable.
Vaccine wastage refers to the number of doses wasted as compared to administered during the drive. As per the Centre’s standard operational procedure (SOP) on Covid-19 vaccination, the Wastage Multiple Factor (WMF) has been calculated at 1.11 after assuming an allowable programmatic wastage of 10%. However, the consistent efforts by the civic administration including, increasing the pace of inoculation and systematic planning, supported by a robust manpower mechanism has ensured a negative vaccine wastage of -0.8 percent.
“The negative wastage has also resulted in more beneficiaries being inoculated than the intended number. This can be gauged by the fact that as against the 2,59,900 doses received, our teams have inoculated 2,65,310 beneficiaries even making use of the extra dose available as a wastage factor in each vial,” said health officer Dr. Anjali Patil.
“Covid-19 vaccine is an essential public health commodity. Strict protocols and systematic planning sessions are in place to reduce wastage and keep it to a minimal level, which helps inoculate more people. Our healthcare personnel are doing a great job,” said civic chief Dilip Dhole.
Notably, each 5 ml vial of the vaccine has 10 doses (for 10 persons) in total. Effective management and skilled vaccinators can get up to 11 to 13 doses from each vial. So far a total of 2,73, 216 doses which include, 2,07,852 first doses and 65,364 second doses have been administered to people in the twin-city.
