BENGALURU: While India launched the world’s first intranasal vaccine iNCOVACC on Republic Day, the State Government is not keen to procure it anytime soon. Sources from the Karnataka Health Department told TNSE that this is because there is not much demand for the existing intramuscular vaccines. “The Health Department will watch the vaccine’s effectiveness and then take a call on administering freely,” said an official.
“Karnataka’s booster dose coverage is 22% as against the expectation of 50% by end of January. We have been conducting vaccine melas to improve the coverage. But people are not showing the interest that they had earlier for the simple reason that the positive cases have significantly declined. To avoid any more wastage of vaccines, we will henceforth place orders only after 80% of the stock is exhausted,” the official added.
A member of the state’s Covid-19 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) said that for now, Karnataka is administering Covaxin, Covishield and the heterologous Corbevax. Sputnik V is being administered by a few select private hospitals, which is also losing its demand drastically.
“For now, there is no demand for any vaccines. iNCOVACC which got emergency authorisation is said to be effective in the trials that happen in a controlled setting. We will watch how it is doing in the real-world setting. If there is enough demand, then we will take it up for discussion and it has to be approved by clinicians in the state,” a TAC member said.
He added that unlike the three intramuscular administered vaccines, iNCOVACC should be administered directly into the nose and this will throw up practical difficulties like the receiver sneezing while taking the dose. There is also limited training data available for medical staffers on administering the vaccine, sources said.