Patchy start to 18+ vaccine drive, Centre rushes doses to states

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 1

The expanded adult Covid inoculation drive took off to a patchy start on Saturday with a majority of the states delaying the rollout and a handful managing token coverage.

This came on a day when India crossed another grim milestone of 4 lakh cases with the total disease load rising to 1,91,64,969. The country saw 4,01,993 cases over 24 hours even as active cases crossed 32 lakh, crippling the health systems.

With vaccine shortage plaguing the ambitious national drive, the Ministry of Health rushed doses to all the states for the first fortnight of May to handhold them through the drive until it stabilised. In the northern region, Punjab got 6,16,520 doses (4,63,710 Covishield and 1,52,810 Covaxin).

Over 2.5 crore 18 to 44-year-olds have registered on the CoWIN platform after the drive opened on April 28.

As of today, Gujarat managed the widest coverage of the adult inoculation drive starting with 10 districts, followed by Uttar Pradesh in seven districts, Maharashtra one, Chhattisgarh three and Jammu and Kashmir two. The rest of the states said they would delay the drive until vaccine orders arrived.

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal said the plan would start from Monday while Goa, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala announced postponement of the drive subject to the availability of doses. Odisha conducted a dry run ahead of the May 3 rollout.

Hiccups marked the vaccinations at three private hospital chains in Delhi—Max, Appollo and Fortis.

The government insisted the states had 79 lakh balance doses of the 16.37 crore it had provided them free of cost. States have so far consumed 15,58,48,782 doses and 79,13,518 are still available with them, said the Health Ministry. As many as 17,31,110 doses would be sent over the next three days, it said.