Daily inoculation numbers go down as Rajasthan struggles with shortage of vaccine

As per data from the Health Department, on Tuesday, the total vaccine doses administered were 1.48 lakh, much lower than just a week back, when 5.81 lakh doses were administered on April 7.

After Rajasthan achieved its highest figures in terms of daily Covid-19 vaccine doses administered last week, the state is currently faced with a severe shortage of vaccines which has resulted in a sharp decline in its daily vaccination data.

According to senior officials of the health department, while the state has the capacity to inoculate over 5 lakh people daily, it is falling far behind its target in absence of adequate supply of vaccines from the Centre.

Earlier, due to its massive inoculation drive, Rajasthan had become the second state in the country after Maharashtra to administer 1 crore doses of vaccine to its population.

The vaccine shortage has become a major challenge as Covid-19 cases are seeing a sharp spike everyday, even surpassing the figures of last year in the state.

“We have run out of vaccination supplies. At present we have the capacity to carry on around 7 lakh inoculations per day but because of no supplies, we aren’t able to administer the doses. I have written to the Union Health Minister, requesting him to send us more vaccine doses. We want the Centre to send us around 30 lakh doses so that we can increase the daily inoculation rate,” state Health Minister Raghu Sharma told The Indian Express on Wednesday.

As per data from the Health Department, on Tuesday, the total vaccine doses administered were 1.48 lakh, much lower than just a week back, when 5.81 lakh doses were administered on April 7.

The data indicates that the daily vaccination figures went down between April 9 and April 13. While 4.21 lakh doses were administered on April 9, the very next day the figure came down to 2.9 lakh doses as the vaccine supplies started running out. The daily inoculation figures for April 11, April 12 and April 13 were 1.1 lakh, 2 lakh and 1.48 lakh respectively.

The state had received an additional supply of 4 lakh vaccine doses on April 11 but it could never achieve the benchmark of administering over 5 lakh vaccine doses that it had set last week.

“We are set to receive 2 lakh vaccine supply today. Earlier, the supply would come in the numbers of 10-15 lakh which had resulted in the government administering more than 5 lakh doses everyday. The daily vaccinations have gone down because of this vaccine shortage,” said Raghuraj Singh, Project Director (Immunisation).

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