Unavailability of the Covid-19 vaccine has put a break on the vaccination drive in the city following which many private centres are not conducting the drive and those civic and government-run centres have only less stock to vaccinate the beneficiaries.
The vaccination drive at BKC jumbo Covid centres came to a halt after the Covid-19 vaccine ran out of stock on Friday morning. This is for the second time in three days, BKC jumbo Covid centres did not conduct vaccination drives. Currently, the civic body has around 1 lakh doses available which can last for two days. Officials said they are expecting some doses to arrive tonight. Moreover many private centres didn’t conduct the vaccination drive due to the unavailability of stock.
Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner, said they have been getting vaccine doses from the Centre, but they are not in bulk. Moreover the civic body has a storage capacity of stocking around 12 million vaccine doses at the central vaccine storage facility in Kanjurmarg, and the same is expected to be utilised starting May 1.
“It is obvious centres will run out of stock as we are getting covid-19 vaccine is less quantity due to which we have to figure it out at which centres it should be sent considering the beneficiaries turnout at respective Covid vaccine centres. For the last two weeks the stock of vaccines are very less due to which only civic and government-run centres are holding the vaccination drive while private have been asked to stop,” he said.
Senior doctors from the BKC jumbo Covid centre said they had around 500-550 Covishield doses, which were used. Moreover they had around 2,000 Covaxin doses available for the second dose which are being administered. However, both doses dried up on Friday morning following which they had to cancel the vaccination drive until further notice.
"We have received information that we will get the Covishield doses by this evening. If that happens, we will begin vaccination tomorrow. We realised last night about the shortage of Covishield doses,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr Siddarth Paliwal, city-based physician said, “The crowding in the form of long queues outside civic vaccination centres will only prove dangerous considering the virus is mutating and its new variants are spreading faster. In all this, the long queues outside vaccination centres only add to the spread.”