Only 50,000 doses for 18+ allocated by Centre for June to Chandigarh, says director of health services

Chandigarh director of health services Dr Amandeep Kang on Monday told The Indian Express that UT has been allocated 50,000 doses of Covid vaccine for the month of June by the Government of India for inoculating beneficiaries in the 18 to 44-year category, and the Chandigarh administration cannot purchase beyond this from the Serum Institute.

“Even if we want to vaccinate the entire population in the age group of 18 to 44 right now, we cannot. This is mainly because the supply of vaccine doses is being regulated from the back end. We have been allocated 50,000 doses for June by the Government of India. We wanted to purchase the vaccines directly from the Serum Institute of India, but the Centre capped the numbers and asked them to allocate only 50,000 to Chandigarh,” Dr Amandeep Kang told The Indian Express.

In Chandigarh, a total of 3.82 lakh people have been vaccinated so far, of which only 73,083 are in the age group of 18 to 44 years.
Speaking about the vaccination plan, Dr Kang said that there is no dearth of vaccines for people above the age of 45 at the moment. However, procuring vaccine doses for beneficiaries in the 18 to 44 age category was a challenge.

“We are ready to pay any amount to vaccinate our people. But the point is that the allocation is being done by the Centre for states and UTs. We made a payment to the Serum Institute of India for vaccine purchase. But they told us that the Union government has allocated just 50,000 dose for the month of June to Chandigarh for the age group of 18 to 44,” the director of health services said.

Chandigarh has paid Rs 300 per dose for the 50,000 doses of Covishield for the 18+ category. Around 27,000 of these vials are expected to reach the UT by June 10.

Kang, on the other hand, specified that there was no paucity of doses for people in the 45 plus age group. She said they had around 50,000 doses in stock for the 45 plus category with an allocation of 70,000 more having been made for the month of June. “So we have around 1.20 lakh doses, and as per details already 70 per cent of the 45 plus population have been vaccinated,” Kang added.

Prodded, she added that only around 14 per cent of beneficiaries in the age group of 18 to 44-years had got the jabs, even though they accounted for a total of 40 per cent of the UT’s population.

“On a daily basis, we are vaccinating around 2000 to 4000 people, whereas we have the capacity to inoculate at least 40,000 beneficiaries in a day if we get the supply of vaccines from the back end. We want to make it clear that there is no issue on part of the Chandigarh administration. The issue lies in the supply,” she specified.

Till Monday, as many as 73,083 people had taken their first doses in the 18-44 category, while eight of them had taken their second dose. In the 45 plus category, at least 1,09,938 people had taken their first doses, while 13,213 had got the second dose. In the category of 60 plus, around 76,807 people had taken their first doses and 33350 had taken their second doses. As many as 24,826 health care workers had taken their first vaccine doses and 14422 had taken their second dose. In the front line workers category, 22,724 people had taken the first dose, while 14,227 people had taken their second dose.