India's double whammy, Covid-19 cases up but vaccines run out in several states

India on Friday was hit by a double whammy of 1.32 lakh fresh Covid-19 cases and closure of vaccination centres in populous states like Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha where hospitals had to refuse people turning up for vaccination.

The Union Health Ministry did not clarify the reasons for vaccine shortages as flagged by the states, but at a special meeting, a Group of Ministers on Covid-19 discussed strategies to hike the production of the two vaccines.

NITI Ayog member Vinod Paul informed the GoM on the efforts being taken up to ramp up production of the existing vaccines and shared details about the potency and timelines of vaccines undergoing clinical trials, the Union Health Ministry said in a statement.

“The vaccine shortage is due to poor logistics planning and coordination. If a software platform was built to forecast demand through pre-registration, then there should be no reason for a shortage. Yes, opening up the vaccination to all above 45 years may have some increase in demand but there has not been a population explosion overnight,” a community health specialist told DH.

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Serum Institute of India has a capacity to produce 70 million doses of Covishield every month while Bharat Biotech can produce 10-20 million doses of Covaxin. However, neither the two companies nor the central government disclosed the current production volume of the shots.

In Mumbai, out of 120 Covid-19 vaccination centres run by the BMC as many as 71 had to shut due to a paucity of the doses. Nearly 30-35% of more than 3,600 vaccination centres across Maharashtra – the worst affected state in the second surge – have to close in the absence of a fresh supply of doses.

In Noida and Ghaziabad in the National Capital Region, private hospitals turned away people who had registered on Co-WIN and reached the hospitals. In Odisha, out of 1,400 vaccination centres, nearly 700 have run out of vaccines. Last month Rajasthan too had complained about vaccine shortage.

“No one expected there would be such a surge in the Covid-19 cases as being witnessed. The vaccination strategy was designed assuming that there was reasonable herd immunity as per the series of serosurveys. But most of the assumptions that formed the basis of the vaccine delivery strategy no longer hold good,” explained Oommen John, a senior public health researcher from the George Institute for Global Health, Delhi.

A day before, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said the Centre had distributed 13.5 crore doses of the Covid-19 vaccines of which the states utilised 9.1 crore doses while 2.4 crore doses are in the stock. Another 1.9 crore doses are in the pipeline and would reach the states soon. In addition, 12.89 crore doses of the vaccines were either gifted or sold to foreign countries.

In a television interview, Vardhan insisted there was no vaccine shortage in India, but did not share the data on vaccine production and supply.