-Rituparna Dutta
The ‘Tika Utsav’ coined by Prime Minister on the wake of second wave of coronavirus was launched on Sunday April 11, where a four-day inoculation drive will be conducted in large scale to vaccinate six lakh people per day. However, most of states had to drop down the initiative due to the abysmal crunch of insufficient covid vaccine doses.
Defeating the US, India in recent days has become the largest country in the world to have successfully inoculated more than 10 crore people in the third phase of vaccination. But, the rising deficiency of Covid vaccine doses has raised serious concerns among the states such as Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Assam and Rajasthan.
With almost dozen of states requesting the Center to disburse vaccine doses for unhindered inoculation drive, many states had to shut down vaccination centres despite people waiting outside to take the jab. The shortage of Covid vaccine came to highlight after Maharashtra Heath Minister Rajesh Tope in several attempts requested the centre to send vaccine doses as the state is running out of stock.
In Andhra Pradesh, the depleted vaccine stock have forced the state to postpone vaccination drive in some districts organised in lower scale. Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy had also written to the centre, requesting to allot 25 lakh doses to the state. As a result, the tika utsav had to be postponed until the fresh arrival of vaccine doses is received.
A similar representation was acknowledged in Odisha on Tika Utsav after 900 vaccination centres had to shut down owing to shortage of Covid vaccines. On the other hand, Punjab is allegedly saying that the state is left with only five days of stock, whereas, Uttarakhand, UP and Assam are facing similar discrepancies.
On a contrary to rising vaccine shortage problems, vaccine wastage has also come out as a graving concern. In a recent report by Hindustan Times, wastage of vaccine doses kept on rolling cumulatively in several states including Tamil Nadu-12.4 percent; Haryana-10 percent; Bihar-8.1 percent; Punjab-8 percent; Assam-7.3 percent; Andhra-7.3 percent and Delhi-7 percent. The alarming concern of vaccine wastage drew attention in the month of March this year, following Telangana, Rajasthan, UP and Andhra to record highest vaccine wastage to 17.5 percent as compared to national average 6.5 percent.
At present, India has surpassed Brazil becoming the second country in the world after America to be raptured under the growing second wave of coronavirus. According to Heath Ministry, in the last 24 hours 1,68,712 fresh cases were registered, making the largest single day spike in the year. Among the fresh cases, 50 percent is registered from Maharashtra and the rest from Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala, UP, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal.
The shortage of vaccine stocks in the country, if not adhered with utter importance can eventually lead to ruckus in the inoculation drive, forging opportunities of malpractices.