As hospitals in Delhi are still reeling under Covaxin shortage, now the national capital has run out of Covishield stock.
The Delhi government had in June directed all government centres, private hospitals and nursing homes that Covaxin will only be administered to those in the 18-44 age group that had received it as first dose. More than a month later,?Covishield remained the only vaccine option for the capital.
However, the city has now exhausted its Covishield COVID-19 vaccine stock following which, several government-run vaccination centres in Delhi will be closed on Tuesday,?Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said on Monday.??
India Times attempted to book a slot for this week and found that the vaccine is unavailable till 19th July. Further, it showed no vaccine centres were available to book a slot for Covishield from July 21-26.
Only 36,310 vaccine doses could be administered in Delhi till 10 pm on Monday as opposed to around 1.5 lakh of daily vaccine doses being administered on an average earlier.
"Vaccines have run out in Delhi again. The central government gives vaccines for a day or two, then we have to keep the vaccine centres closed for several days. Why is our country's vaccine programme faltering even after so many days?" Mr Sisodia wrote on Twitter, while sharing a report on the shortage of vaccines.
Delhi has repeatedly raised the issue of shortage of vaccine doses with several different centres remaining shut for days on end since the new phase of universalisation of COVID-19 vaccination commenced on June 21 under which the centre is providing vaccines free-of-cost to all states.
There has also been a decline in average daily inoculation against coronavirus since June 21 across the country, government data showed on Monday.Some states such as Maharashtra have also raised the issue of vaccine shortage.
According to the data available on the CoWIN platform, an average of 61.14 lakh doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered daily in the week from June 21-27 in India, which dropped to 41.92 lakh doses daily in the subsequent week of June 28-July 4.
In the week from July 5 to July 11, the daily average vaccine doses number further dipped to 34.32 lakh doses.However, the Health Ministry said over 1.54 crore balance and unutilised COVID-19 vaccine doses are still available with the states, Union Territories and private hospitals.
The cumulative number of vaccine doses administered in India till now has reached 37.73 crore under the nationwide vaccination drive.?The centre plans to inoculate the entire adult population in India by the end of December this year.