BHUBANESWAR: Odisha government was forced to stop vaccination drive in eight districts, including five hotspots, while 70 per cent (pc) session sites ran dry on Sunday due to unavailability of vaccine doses.The districts, where the vaccination came to a halt, included Deogarh, Jharsuguda, Koraput, Nabarangpur, Nuapada, Rayagada, Sambalpur and Sonepur. Apart from this, the drive was stopped in the urban areas of 10 districts bordering Chhattisgarh due to weekend shutdown.
Of the planned 1,500 sites, the vaccination was conducted at only 446 centres as the rest 1,054 sites were closed in the absence of Covishield vaccine. Only 52,041 doses could be administered on the day against over 2.5 lakh doses administered per day a week ago. Even as Odisha is struggling to ramp up its vaccination target up to three lakh doses a day, the data shared by the Union Health Ministry indicated that around 60 pc of the total doses given so far are confined to eight states - Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
Odisha has sent SOS to the Centre several times in the last one week demanding 25 lakh doses in a single lot so that it can plan the sessions in advance for at least 10 days. Of its target of vaccinating around 1.2 crore people, the State has so far administered two doses to 6.67 lakh people and single dose to the rest 43.43 lakh. It requires nearly 2 crore more doses to meet the target.
Director of Family Welfare and nodal officer of Covid vaccination Dr Bijay Panigrahi said it will take more than six months to cover the age group if the drive is conducted in this pace. “Since vaccination is another robust medium to prevent spread of infection, we have to ramp up the drive. But vaccine shortage has crippled us. We have received two lakh doses of Covishield on Sunday against the demand of 25 lakh doses,” he said.
Vax crisis
State has a stock of 4 lakh doses of Covishield
2 lakh doses of Covaxin vaccines
Covishield doses will be exhausted in two days
State has planned 1,021 sessions in all 30 districts and Bhubaneswar on Monday