CHANDIGARH: The Haryana government has said the Covid-19 vaccine wastage in the state has come down from 6 per cent, as per the data recently released by the Centre government, to 2-3 per cent.
The state health department said the vaccine wastage percentage was relatively higher in the data released by the Centre as there was a data “mismatch” and the districts have rectified it.
The state has, so far, administered a total of 53.72 lakh doses, with Gurugram reporting the highest at 6.34 lakh followed by Faridabad (5 lakh). Additional chief secretary (health) of the Haryana government Rajeev Arora said in a data recently released by the Centre government, Haryana had a 6 per cent wastage of Covieshield and 10.2 per cent wastage of Covaxin.
Thereafter, the officers of the health department immediately swung into action and identified that there was a data mismatch. He said the officers concerned corrected the data mismatch and subsequently, the wastage percentages dropped from 6 per cent for Covieshield to 3.1 per cent and 10.2 per cent of Covaxin to 2.4 per cent. Thus, the average wastage percentage is between 2 per cent to 3 per cent.
He elaborated that director of the National Health Mission, Haryana, Prabhjot Singh, along with the state immunisation team held two orientation programmes with all officers of the health department involved in vaccine administration of all districts through video-conferencing. Thereafter, the districts with high wastage were identified and separate consultation was given to them.
Arora said the districts which reported high vaccine wastage were Hisar, Palwal, Nuh, Kaithal, Rohtak and Bhiwani. Arora said 2,07,892 healthcare workers (HCWs) have been administered the first dose of vaccine and 1,33,828 HCWs have been administered the second dose of vaccine.