Center blames states for drop in vaccination, says ongoing supply

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WITH the number of daily vaccinations down from the peak at the end of June, when the policy switched to supply by the Center and free vaccines for all, the government said on Wednesday that the availability of Covid vaccines was in good shape. way.

As states like Rajasthan and Delhi have claimed vaccine shortages, the new Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, in his first statement on vaccine count, said they were on the verge of make 13.5 crore doses available for July.

He also blamed “mismanagement” for long queues outside immunization centers, saying the center had forwarded advance information to states on vaccine availability. “If… long queues of vaccine recipients are observed, it is clearly obvious what the real problem is and who is responsible for it. “

It was on June 21 that the new policy, with the Center purchasing vaccines for all government centers and offering them free to beneficiaries, was rolled out. Between June 21 and June 30, the country reported a daily average of 54.88 lakhs of vaccination. However, in the first two weeks of July, this dropped to an average dose of 37.63 lakh.

In a series of tweets, Mandaviya said the Center had notified all states by June 19 of the vaccines that would be available for July. Subsequently, on June 27 and July 13, he said, states were notified of the daily availability of vaccines for the first and second half of July. This was done in order for states to plan the vaccination campaign “in a better and more efficient way,” the minister said.

Explained the woes of vaccines

A new team at the head of the Ministry of Health, the Center acted quickly to dispel any blame that could be attributed to it, amid visuals of beneficiaries crammed into vaccination centers and States again speaking of shortages.

Mandaviya tweeted: To enable vaccination through public and private hospitals, 11.46 crore vaccine doses were made available to state and Union Territory governments in June 2021 by the Department of Health and of the Union’s family welfare. This availability was increased to 13.50 crore doses in July. The increase that followed the June 21 policy change was due to unused doses of 2.98 crore with the States at the time. At the end of June, the cumulative supply to the states stood at 32.13 crore in doses.

On July 1, data from the Department of Health showed a cumulative supply of 32.92 crore in doses, while on Wednesday, July 14, it stood at 39.59 crore. This effectively means that from July 1 to July 14, 6.67 crore doses were provided to states. At a daily average of 37.63 lakh vaccinations, that figure would imply that more than 1 crore of doses go unused.

Significantly, during a review meeting on Wednesday with 15 states hard hit by Covid, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan raised the issue of “the slow pace of vaccination” in private centers, calling it a “cause for serious concern”. Unlike government centers, private centers charge for vaccines.

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