Crucial Covid vaccine saving in Thane

Thane: Intensive training on usage of vaccine vials and micro-level planning at the centres has helped the state ensure additional shots are made available for beneficiaries over the last four months, said state officials.
While the state officials said overall figures of vaccine wastage is between 0-5%, the Thane municipal corporation has managed to conserve and minimise wastage of vial doses to -2.5% ensuring nearly 2.5% more beneficiaries were brought under the fold of vaccination while the same at neighbouring Kalyan was five per cent, reveal data.
Municipal commissioner Dr Vipin Sharma informed Thane corporation has delivered around 3.5 lakh doses of Covaxin and Covishield as against the government supplied delivery of 3.4 lakh doses since January 2021. The corporation has managed to ensure 2.5% additional doses were delivered from the existing stock without compromising on the volume to be administered to each recipient, he said.
Dr Dilip Patil, chief immunization officer at the state government said that as per the mandate, ten recipients are to be administered 0.5ml from each vial which usually has capacity for eleven doses.
“Most of our vaccinators have been delivering polio and other vaccines over the years and we also intensified training them to optimize the vials while filling syringes and ensure more doses than stipulated could be delivered. Also, proper planning was done to ensure minimum ten beneficiaries were available at the time of opening a new vial,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr Sharma said they gave intensive training to all the nurses delivering the vaccine jabs and kept checks on those centres that reported wastage. “We also introduced a competitive culture and incentive schemes for centres that reported almost negligible wastage or optimised the vaccine stock. We feel our vaccine optimization is one of the best in the state,” he said.
It may be noted that since January 16, Thane Municipal Corporation has already vaccinated nearly 23433 health care workers along with 24100 front line workers in addition to 89000 in the 45 plus age group and over one lakh seniors. A notable volume of these have also been given the booster dose.
Meanwhile, neighbouring Kalyan-Dombivli Corporation has also registered a notable volume of vaccine optimization with around five per cent extra doses being made available of the nearly two lakhs vaccine doses made available.
(Kalyan inputs from Pradeep Gupta)