Scale up vaccination, cut wastage: Centre to States

The Centre has asked state governments to scale up vaccination to the April inoculation numbers and reduce wastage. It has assured them of uninterrupted vaccine supply over and above the indicated numbers for June.At an all-India review of the vaccination exercise on Monday, the health ministry told the state governments that it had been assured of over 120 million doses and the states could get more supplies than the numbers indicated on May 29.A senior state government official, who did not wish to be identified, told ET: “The health ministry has told all states to scale up vaccination to their capacity — something many states achieved during Teeka Utsav in April. States have been asked to bring up the inoculations to April level and not worry about supplies. The health ministry has conveyed that states could get more than what has been expected.”However, no exact timeline was given to states about more supplies. “The states can be told even a day in advance that they would get more supplies,” said another state government official. 83163653The states have been asked to bring down wastage as it remained a key to optimal utilisation of vaccines. Even though vaccine wastage of states has been scaled down from May 25 levels after the data updation exercise, Jharkhand still has the highest wastage at 33.87%. During the May 25 exercise, Jharkhand’s wastage was at 37.3%.Jharkhand is followed by Chhattisgarh at 17.66% (down from 30.2%), J&K 7.99% (down from 10.8%), Madhya Pradesh 7.53% (down from 10.7%), Punjab 6.69%, Uttarakhand 5.49% and Tamil Nadu 5.01%. Four states — Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh — had contested high vaccine wastage figures attributed to them in the last review. The four states had told ET that it is data updation lag and they would take it up with the health ministry.According to the health ministry data, shared with states on Monday, Kerala, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, West Bengal, Haryana, Goa, Daman and Diu are at the other end of the spectrum with negative wastage. Haryana has had a complete turnaround from being red flagged for having the highest vaccine wastage in early May — 6% for Covishield and 10.2% for Covaxin. Haryana had also reported it as a data lag and sought special permission from the health ministry to update CoWIN vaccine usage data. It had found several districts where vaccine usage data from the Teeka Utsav had not been updated.

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