Covid vaccination drive sees 70 per cent decline as jab supply takes a hit in Uttarakhand

Dehradun: The COVID-19 vaccination process in Uttarakhand suffered over 70 per cent decline in last four days with numbers dwindling from over 1 lakh per day to less than 30,000 people getting the jab in one day. 

The data released by the state health department suggested steep fall in number of people getting vaccinated after Friday. 

On Thursday, in total 718 sessions across the state, 1,07,658 people were vaccinated while on Friday number of sessions fell to 697 with 60,841 people getting vaccinated.

On Saturday, the number of session came down to 519 with 45,684 people getting vaccine doses and the number of people getting vaccines went down to 26,719 with only 300 sessions across the state. 

Meanwhile, the state got 1.38 lakh doses of COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday, said health department officials. However, the state government has requested 10 lakh doses from the centre

JC Pande, nodal officer, medical health and family welfare of Uttarakhand said, "Total 1.38 lakh does of Covishield vaccine have arrived and vaccination drive will go smooth in state from Monday. The vaccines have been already dispatched to all 13 districts."

The state is vaccinating over 1 lakh people everyday and officials said they have vaccines only for next three days now. Overall, 178 vaccination centers across the state had to stop the drive  due to unavailability of the doses. 

Till dated, out of the total 11,24,056 vaccinated people, 18,1150 have been vaccinated with both the doses. 

The hill state registered highest number of cases in one day this year with 1,333 new cases on Sunday.

The weekly data indicates that Covid cases have reached 2020 levels with active cases reaching 7323 across the state.

According to the data of week 56 (April 4-10), since the inception of Covid in Uttarakhand on March 15, 2020, the state conducted highest ever tests in one week- 239522. 

Anoop Nautiyal, whose Social Development for Communities Foundation has been analysing the Covid data since March 2020 says, "The center, the state and the people need to take radical decisions in terms of behaviour, management and resourcesfuless. The center must ensure enough doses of vaccine, the states must check the spread and people must be adhere to Covid appropriate behaviour."