17,000 vaccinated in Jalandhar; no dose left for today

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 21

The district is facing the shortage of vaccine doses again and again. Though around 17,000 beneficiaries were inoculated on Wednesday, the Health Department has run out of the stock again and there is likelihood that no beneficiary will be inoculated tomorrow.

After a gap of many days, the inoculation drive resumed on Wednesday. The vaccination drive remained suspended with the stock running dry. Long queues, beneficiaries jostling in lines, a long wait for their turn, etc, were the scenes witnessed at the crowded sites of the district as vaccination resumed after days in the district.

With a clamour among people to get vaccinated, the vaccine stock exhausted soon after they came in. With 17,000 people receiving their jabs in the district, the district ran out of all vaccines in a single day. As per the Health Department, there is no Covishiled dose to vaccinate anyone tomorrow as all of them were used up.

As previously highlighted by this newspaper, in Jalandhar as many as 5,000 to 10,000 people wait for their second jab daily. While nearly 9.50 lakh people have been vaccinated so far, the increasingly erratic vaccine supply is driving the population to the edge.

The first dose has so far been administered to less than one lakh of the nearly 9 and a half lakh people vaccinated so far.

District Immunisation Officer Dr Rakesh Chopra said, “We have used up all of our vaccination supplies today. All 17,000 vaccines received have been administered. There are last few doses of Covaxin left at the Garha session site. Barring these, we do not have any vaccine dose left for tomorrow. We do not know the time of arrival of the next slot of vaccines so far.”

Interestingly, the Health Department was left with about a 100 doses on January 17 after the supply was exhausted. This time the supplies are running low. Sources said there was simply no guarantee of the future vaccine drive as the supply chain was not regularised.