Vaccine wastage down by half but Chhattisgarh & Jharkhand ‘states of concern': Official

NEW DELHI: Even as wastage of Covid-19 vaccine doses has come down in most states over the last month, it has increased in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh among major states and UTs, raising concerns over the need to further improve vaccine management.
Wastage of doses in Jharkhand rose to 6.4% as on Wednesday morning, double the 3.1% reported on April 22. Chhattisgarh has a wastage of 7.4%, up from 2.9%. Madhya Pradesh reported wastage of 3.3% of doses against 1.4% till about a month ago, official data of 15 states, that currently have maximum doses of anti-Covid shots available, showed.

“The overall national average for wastage of Covid vaccine doses has come down significantly to about 5% from 10% a month ago. However, some states still have higher wastage which is getting reflected in the cumulative figure,” a senior official told TOI.
The Centre has been pressing states and UTs for optimum utilisation of available shots and bring down wastage to below 1%.
While introducing various flexibilities in CoWin to enable additional vaccinations to ensure improved utilisation of doses, the Centre has also said that wastage of anti-Covid shots will be a key criteria negatively impacting the allocation of stocks from the Centre’s kitty to states and UTs.
Around 22 crore vaccine doses have been procured by the Centre and through direct procurement by states. Of this, over 20.1 crore doses were consumed, including wastage, till 8 am on Wednesday.
Over 1.7 crore doses of vaccines are still available with states. Of this, 1.4 crore are with 15 states. UP has the largest balance availability with 25.3 lakh doses, followed by Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh at 13.1 lakh doses each. Gujarat, MP and Bengal have over 10 lakh doses as balance available stocks, the health ministry data showed.