Bhubaneswar: Vaccination against Covid-19 could not be carried out at little less than 400 centres in different districts across Odisha due to shortage of vaccines, informed director of health and family welfare Bijay Panigrahi on Wednesday.
“Covid-19 Vaccination Centres (CVCs) was set up at 1500 points across the State, but vaccination was held at 1103 centres yesterday due to shortage of vaccine,” Panigrahi said.
Panigrahi’s statement came at a time when several letters were written by the Odisha health department to Centre highlighting shortage of vaccine in the State.
The health director said the State is running out of vaccine stock and the vaccination drive will be hampered if adequate stock of Covishield vaccine is not supplied to the State within next two days.
“As on today, 1.85 lakh Covishield vaccine doses are in the pipeline. That means the vaccines are available in the all the cold chain points. Therefore, we will not able to achieve the daily target of 2 lakh vaccination today,” he said.
“Yesterday afternoon we received 3,49,130 doses of Covishield which were sent to different districts last evening and today morning. The stock is adequate for two days of vaccination only. If vaccine does not reach thereafter, our vaccination drive will get affected,” Panigrahi added.
The health director said the State government is in constant touch with the Centre over supply of vaccines.
“The additional chief secretary (health) has written to the Centre requesting to supply at least 15 lakh doses of vaccine to ensure uninterrupted inoculation drive. We are yet to get any response from the Centre.”
Panigrahi, however, said that there is sufficient stock of Covaxin in the State.
(Edited By Suryakant Jena)