BHUBANESWAR: Even as the vaccination drive picked up momentum on Friday after arrival of Covishield doses in the districts, 292 centres continued to remain shut due to non-availability of adequate stock.Health department sources said 1,98,588 beneficiaries, including 1,30,579 people aged between 45 and 59 years, and 65,367 senior citizens, were administered the shots at 1,178 centres.
The programme was severely affected in the State for the last three days due to shortage of vaccine. As many as 692 centres and 670 centres were shut on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. Health officials said close to two lakh doses could be administered on Friday only after the arrival of 3.5 lakh doses of Covishield on Tuesday. The State has been allocated 2.5 lakh more doses which are expected to reach on Saturday.
The State has around 1.26 lakh doses of Covishield and 92,000 doses of Covaxin in stock. It is insufficient for the State which had been conducting over 2.5 lakh vaccinations a day, said Director (Family Welfare) Dr Bijay Panigrahi. Dr Panigrahi said it will take at least a day to dispatch the 2.5 lakh doses of vaccine to the districts once the consignment is received at the State vaccine centre. “It means the drive will get hampered for next two days,” he reasoned.
Meanwhile, the government has shot off another letter to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare seeking more doses of both Covishield and Covaxin. Additional Chief Secretary of Health department PK Mohapatra said Odisha is capable of stepping up the drive and undertaking three lakh vaccinations daily. “Unfortunately, we had to close down two third of our vaccination centres due to extremely low supply of vaccines to our State,” he pointed out.
In a letter to Additional Secretary of Union Ministry of Health, Mohapatra urged to allocate at least 25 lakh doses of Covishield to Odisha immediately to make the ‘Tika Utsav’ more successful and also improve the vaccination coverage. So far, over 41.83 lakh doses of vaccine have been administered in the State.