Jharkhand to get 12 lakh vaccine doses in 2 days
Jharkhand heaved a sigh of relief on Wednesday after the Union health ministry confirmed that it will send 12 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccines by Thursday and Friday
Jharkhand heaved a sigh of relief on Wednesday after the Union health ministry confirmed that it will send 12 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccines by Thursday and Friday. The central government will send two lakh doses of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin and 10 lakh doses of Covishield vaccine of Pune-based Serum Institute of India, state health department officials said.
“The Government of India (GoI) will send two lakh doses of Covaxin vaccine by Thursday, while 10 lakh doses of Covishield vaccine is likely to reach Ranchi by Friday. With this, the state now has adequate doses of the two vaccines for second dose of vaccination,” Ravi Shankar Shukla, state mission director, National Health Mission (NHM), said.
The state health department currently has 97,037 doses of Covishield and 20,124 doses of Covaxin at its disposal as on Wednesday evening, Shukla said.
The state recently on April 3 requested the GoI for five lakh doses of the vaccines in wake of the drying stock.
Besides, the ongoing vaccination drive across the state was also regulated due to the depleting stock of vaccines, particularly Covaxin. An order was issued a couple of days ago asking districts not to use Covaxin for first dose and use it only for the second dose.
One of the worst-hit districts, East Singhbhum (Jamshedpur) was only left with 960 doses of the two vaccines, 430 doses of Covishield and 530 doses of Covaxin, by Tuesday night. This was after obtaining 3,500 doses of Covishield from West Singhbhum and 730 doses of Covaxin from Seraikela-Kharsawan districts. Jamshedpur alone requires 12-15,000 doses of the vaccines per day.
The state till 6pm on Wednesday administered first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to 1,827,886 beneficiaries and second dose to 278, 989 persons.
The need of rapid and wide coverage of the vaccination drive has become an absolute necessity with the fast spreading infection and steep spike in the number of fresh cases across the state, especially Ranchi and Jamshedpur.
During past 24 hours, the state detected 1,265 new Covid-19 cases, of which 539 were found in Ranchi alone. Jamshedpur, on the other hand, detected 340 new Covid-19 patients. The state reported 13 Covid-19 deaths during the past seven days, according to the health department’s bulletin.